The Best Christmas Story Ever!

The Laird is a Highland Warrior, skilled in the use of war-making tools such as the cock and balls. The Laird is also a Pagan, and as such, was unprepared for the demands of the tools of the average Anglo-Saxon Protestant Christmas. Namely, the box-cutter.

Thanks to his noble sacrifice of dignity and flesh, Ha'pint and I had the Best. Christmas. Ever.

Me: I really should read my text messages more at night... Did you suck all the way to the completion of the treasure hunt or did Rooster** "find" her prize under your unconcious body in the front lawn this morning?

Ha'pint: Worse. I'm wearing a red flannel nightgown with sock monkeys all over it from my mommy dearest with red hiking socks and a Christmas apron. Sipping Amaretto and coffee. All I wanted for Christmas was a gift card for a tattoo from them....... The treasure hunt is postponed for New Years Eve. The Lairds's finger! Aaaagh!!!!! Amazingly awesome!!!

Me: Have you looked at the "full view?" Epic. Does Rooster know the treasure hunt is post-poned? ;) That would be awesome.... just keep feeding her lies for a week.

Ha'pint: She knows its postponed. I wasn't clever enough to keep stringing her along. That would have been nice..... I saw two pics front and palm side. Were there more? I want to print and frame it. So you made it to your folks what with no snow and all? Anything awesome happen yet?

Me: I was supposed to go to my folks tomorrow. No driving there yet... I'm in Lowlyville. Celebrated with Phineas T. Groundhog's parents, which was great. What's your highlight reel? I saw the pic with the chunky towell and a pic of it bandaged. Epic.

Ha'pint: I got both where it looks like he's in the ER with blue surgical cloth on the table he's holding it over. The palm view is bloody with some iodine. Well probably good you stayed, its a crazy blizzard outside. Not much other than the outfit I wore and playing Pictionary drunk and having my dad wrote "Cow dick" for "udder" to my daughter.

Me: I haven't seen the e.r. bloody palm! Send! And if you don't mind, send that "stitches" pic to my email? I just accidentally erased it.

Ha'pint: Will do. Gmail or aol? Which one is the good one now?

Me: Gmail all the way. WOW. What ones did you get?

Ha'pint: It's like we are comparing Christmas presents. And personally, it WAS my best Christmas present.

Me: Close... my best has been the boots Phineas T. Groundhog's mom gave me. They are black and Victorian. And swell. I got the "stitches" pic, which i sent to you an hour ago, and the "sliced finger over chunky towel" which came in at about 12:30 last night.

Ha'pint: Man those pics rock. It looks like its coated in fetus cheese. It also looks like it just may fall off soon.

Me: I know! It looks like someone ran a lawnmower over a corpse that was covered by a flesh-colored tarp.

Ha'pint: *smiling* you give the best visuals. I'm happy now.

Me: Can you email me our text conversations for the past two days?

Ha'pint: I'm jumping in the shower and I will soon sort and send while listening to The Oakridge Boys. Gotta love Elvira. Giddy up-uh oom boppa oom boppa mouw mouw.

Me: Heigh-ho Silver! Away!

Thanks, Laird.

** Okay, so I am a kind person. I gave Ha'pint the chance to pick her daughter's moniker. Apparently, just the once was enough for her in this life. A concise sampling of Ha'pint's suggestions:
Fannie
Lucinda
Elvira (Oak Ridge Boys reference I assumed)
Cora
Ramona
Lowly (Richard Scarry? Deep emotional scars??)
Orly (Fuck I don't know)
Jolene (Jolene?)
Dottie
Shania
Dolly (She was on a country kick after "Jolene" I guess.)
Fern
TinaMarie
Savannah
At which point I suggested "Mackayla" and she started screaming "No! Too white and snobby!" (see above for irony) and immediately regressed back to the "soiled dove" names.
Maxine
Matilda
Daisy
Violet
Sage (She was getting hungry I think)
Cinnamon
Pepper
aaaaaand her final offering, "Pippa."

The child got "Rooster." I feel strongly that I have done a good deed this day.

The Bride is Dead

This is a dead bride. Dead dead dead.

Think about all the things that might have been.

Think about all the jokes that never got told, and all the phone conversations that will never be had.

Think about how no matter what anybody says or does, The Bride is dead.

Part of me doesn't want to see the sparkly dress get zipped up in that bag because that means that it's over, for sure.

But then, I think of how wonderfully she died, how she took her own life (no autopsy necessary!), and how much less it will hurt now that I don't have to think about her future anymore.
I don't want to know that she's in the ground, in the dark...

But the alternative is having her propped up in the living room, stinking up the place. And who needs that? Not me. I am relieved, just a little already. The wait is over. The Bride is dead. I don't ever have to think about her again.

I don't ever have to learn to touch her.

I don't ever have to save her life.

Because The Bride is dead.


11.11.11:This little bit of pedantic meandering is the result of the dissolution of my fuckship with The Bride. Since this was originally posted, she's no longer a bride and I still think she's a selfish cunt. So I guess that makes us even?

Suprise! It's a Birthday!

I am genuinely ashamed that I didn't post for the entire month of October. September can go fuck itself. October's where it's at.


October has my heart. It's warm and cool. The month starts with the last of the summer thunderstorms and ends with the potential for a faint flurry of translucent snow. It's the ulitmate foliage tipping point between the gentle ebb of the pale green and the onset of Autumnal burlesque. The air gets spicey with apples and the vomit of south-bound hoboes. The world undergoes a strange crackle of energy that seems to simultaneously wake things up, and dull their senses with too much color and air-born mold.
I was truly convinced, as the month creaked and eeked along, that I would make time to post something before the end, because BY GOD it's my Birthday Month. And maybe I would have made time if the whole month of October hadn't been so incredibly excellent. Seriously, it was like everyone but me knew I was dying! I kept getting great shit. People of varying degrees of hotness wrote long emails and made me feel special. Friends and loved ones made magnificent promises of goods and services to be bestowed on amorphous future occasions.

Good shit, like I said. The birthday haul this year was impressive. Sigoth came through like a champ, despite being heavily involved in moving to a new place. Which is a gift in and of itself. A girl likes to know where she'll be making the walk of shame from. The Bride secured amazingly specific candies from far-away lands and thus, managed to conquer the "sweet spot" on the vinn-diagram of my many fetishes. (It's English! It's Henry and the 6 bitches! It's CHOCOLATE for crissakes! It came from a far-away land in a British Envelope.)

And from here, I could go on to either list everyone in turn who gave me something I actually remember and can use (fuck you whoever gave me "world peace.") or I can trail off with the Cheat. You know, sort of suggest that there are just too, too many people to thank and so I'll thank ALL of you and blahbittyblah.

Instead, I'm going to hedge the gap and say THANK YOU to the 8 of you who did such fucking phenomenal, generous things for me for my birthday. These things ranged from getting up off their asses for five goddamn minutes, all the way to dedicating entire days to making me happy.


Furthermore, it's one of those birthdays that are supposed to strike fear and regret and vague sexual confusion in the hearts of women. And it maybe kind of did. I'm getting olderish. It's not about looks (yet) or wet farts or strange tufts of hair or orthopedic jock straps. It's mostly a matter of time and place. Am I where I wanted to be at this age? Well, not really. But damn, that's kind of a good thing. Depending on which Blogerella from which age you interview, that answer's gonna change. At one point I would have said "a Vet!" (Animal, not War.) A few years later the answer would have been "Dead! Be still my heart!" But as we all know, whatever the story is there, it didn't pan out according to plan. So mostly, I am just happy to BE.

Which is also totally a cheat, but since I don't know how else to be, it's also the right answer.


Nightly News:

I'd like to extend a Shaddout to my friend She-Randall's main man, Klrosksey. He somehow managed to talk her into a wager involving Camel Menthols and her virginal asshole. In summation, he totally won and she's gotta ride the bike with no seat at some point in the future. Ha'pint insists that such a wager would never have been made unless She-Randall had the faint hope that Klrosksey would follow through. I would like to point out that the only reason Ha'pint would think such a thing is if she too harbors the quiet, unspecified hope that someday someone will find a way to trick her out of her fanny cherry.

Man up, bitches. I can't be the only chick in the world who wants to occasionally look around and find a cock in her ass.

Girls Who Can Take Four (4) Fingers In Their Snatch

OR MORE!!!!


I asked The Laird what would make an excellent choice for a new blog post, and this is what he suggested.


Without betraying a whole lot of confidences, I can't possibly write a whole blog about this....

Or can I?!

Here it is! Based on superstition and fear, I hereby present:
Girls Who Can Take Four (4) Fingers In Their Snatch or History's Whores; a Celebration of What Were Almost Certainly Very, Very Sloppy Slits.

Caroline of Brunswick:

Sweet Caroline...
Pretty much the only man in Europe who didn't get a piece of this shit was her husband, England's George IV. George was so repulsed by her that he began drinking immediately after their first meeting 3 days prior to their wedding, and didn't stop til he woke up face-down in the fireplace grate... the wedding night. He managed to rise to the occasion just once, apparently that very night. 9 months after the wedding, Caroline gave birth to their only child (England's heir, the doomed Princess Charlotte). George sent a letter saying thanks, that was really great, but let's see other people, and not each other, ever again.

The other people George wanted to see was his "real" wife, Maria Fitzherbert to whom he'd already been married 8 years when he wed Caroline.

The other people Caroline wanted to see was... everyone.

Caroline packed her unwashed panties and moved onto "The Continent." She became famous for her dinner parties and especially the after-dinner entertainment, which usually included lots of topless dancing. Performed by her. She would proudly show "special" guests her wind-up oriental sex doll, and occasionally dance naked on the pier when she grew bored with doing it at home.
She fucked Napoleon's brother, a slew of footmen in her employ, stable hands, any number of lesser Nobles, and possibly the oriental doll. Times were fast and fun 'til the Old King died and George's number came up for duty. Caroline traveled to England fully expecting to be crowned Queen alongside him. Instead, Parliament offered her a fortune to leave and never, ever come back. She didn't take the subtle hint, and showed up at his coronation, crown in hand, only to be summarily locked out of the church. Being a lady and a Queen and all, she did the only thing she could do. She screamed obscenities at the door until she grew tired, then she went home and died.

Fing-O-Meter: A solid 4, because she may have had a bastard or two after birthing the Princess Royal, and because she didn't mind the occaisional low-born brute.


Maria-Theresa of Austria:

(Empress Maria Theresia Walburga Amalia Christina... we got nuthin' but time and names, bitches.)

It's not so much that she whored her way to a gaping gash; no, she was above reproach. (At least in the bedroom.) What gets Maria-Theresa on our enviable list isn't her in-put, but her out-put. She had 16 mother-fucking kids in 20 years, a feat that would blow anyone's vag out. And she didn't pull any of that Catherine of Aragon cheater-pants stuff; they were all full-term and live. For a while at least. 13 of the original 16 lived to be diplomatic pawns, so that's good.
She was married to a paragon of manliness named Francis Joseph of Lorraine (sexy), who somehow managed to find time to fuck other women despite the demanding schedule of Maria Theresa's ovulation cycles.

Their last daughter grew up to be Marie Antionette. Prior to Marie's marriage and unfortunate remarks about diamond necklaces and cake (didn't happen!!) she was famous first for walking out of her mother's womb while hula-hooping and using pantomime instead of crying. Because that shit was HUGE. These weren't normal babies. These were fucking AUSTRIAN babies. They were goggle-eyed and had massive Ha'pint-sized foreheads and paniers and powdered wigs. Probably 10 pounds a piece. So you know that the panty-pudding must've looked like a deflated inner-tube at the end of summer.

By the time she shat out the ninth or tenth, Maria Theresa stopped even taking bed-rest on the day off birth. She literally got up out of her bed and went to a meeting with her ministers immediately after delivery the day Marie Antionette was born. A woman's gotta have hobbies. Besides riding Francis raw every night.

Fing-O-Meter: At least 5. Not only did she pop out babies like an 18th century human salad-shooter, but you have to spot her points for ease of insertion. After-birth makes good lube.


Catherine the Great:

Catherine really WAS great, if for no other reason than her passion for knowing how to solve problems like nation-wide slavery without actually doing anything about it. (Serf's up.) But we're here to talk about her twat. Catherine started slow, building both her character and sexual frustration over the course of the first 10 years of her marriage to the idiot Grand Duke Peter of Holstein. (Yes.. like the cow.) He would set up army men on their bed and demand that she play with him into the night. He would capture and hang the Palace mice for misconduct. He also drooled. Catherine put up with this shit just long enough to figure out what a penis was and how to use it, then devoted herself to happily popping out a couple of heirs to the Russian throne. Concieved, of course, through the assistance of people other than Peter, who was still working through complex maneuvers on the four-poster.
Meat-work done, Catherine set out to have some real fun. She took over the throne of Russia, and collected a series of lovers and paramours from all stations of life. She was Empress and all, so she implemented a handy-dandy free-clinic style STD screening process. She had her potential lovers fuck her handmaids first. If the girls didn't get freckles on their ass, then Catherine would take the new boy for a spin.
But what makes her a 4-finger champion? She eventually got tired of all the effort she was putting into recruiting her new pieces of ass, and so she sub-contracted that part out to her former lover (and possible secret husband), Gregory Potemkin.
Gregory stank, had rotten teeth and was missing an eye. He could throw some mean dick, though, so even after the spark of romance dissipated, she kept him around as the imperial pimp. Sweeeet.

And if there is any question about Cathy's capacity, consider the fact that IN HER OWN LIFETIME, the Russian people had already started circulating stories about her sexual appetite. She was rumored to have fucked her way through most of the standing Russian army and a few visiting delegations as well. And then there is the Horse. Mr. Ed supposedly crushed her to death in coitus.

Fing-O-Meter: 10. Totally. Bitch had to knock the cock out of her ass just to take a dump. I doubt the horse story only because there's no way the horse would have been able to find a hole on her that was tight enough to offer a little friction.

Horses have standards.


Aperitif:
Napoleon wasn't quite the sad little dwarf of legend. He stood at about 5 feet, 7 inches tall. This was a skooge above average male height for the time. To clarify, he wasn't 4 feet tall. That is erroneous. His cock was 4 feet tall.
Napoleon: 5' 7". Josephine's Tube Steak: 4'.
Get it right.

Pop Goes the Damsel

So I've popped a few zits in my day. It comes with the territory. In addition to feeding me fat-back (a substance only really poor white trash eat and then only as a "garnish") as a main-dish with the nightly meat-n-three as a child, the parents also passed on to me a digestive system marked by the ability to shoot lava-hot acidic bile out of either my ass OR mouth, and the sort of skin that Ukrainian orphans who work in sulphur mines would describe as "rough."

My brother had it first, which, in addition to priming my taste for popping zits and excavating pimples, served as a sort of warning shot for the perils of continuing life into adolescence. My brother, "Leslie," had cystic acne starting from his hairline and continuing all the way down to his ass. Back, chest and various crevices were not spared. I spent some of the happiest hours of my life as a child, (there was a decade age gap) huddled next to him on a floor, with a bobby-pin, upholstery needle and nail clippers in rotation as I gouged at his cratered carcass like a turkey vulture with a swiss-army-knife for a beak. Leslie's moans of anguish as I tapped the upholstery needle into assorted infected pores with a heavy book were soothing, sort of like Enya for hill-billies.
Which brings us to the point, which is that I LIKE to pop zits. It's not just the popping itself with its heady mixture of pain and pleasure, anticipation and release. Sort of like masturbating with a penis instead of the usual equipment, if you're a girl. It's also the endless possibilities after the thing has shot it's load, and you're standing there in the bathroom, holding this slightly damp, elegantly curled albino fairy-turd on your finger and wonder what life will be like from now on. Now the REAL magic happens. You wipe it on the mirror.

I call this "frosting the frame" and it's a must-do for any arts and crafts fan, or just the recreational face picker. You start low, usually the bottom of the frame, as it's convenient to the finger and face, post-pop. With careful planning and a little imagination, you can create miniature macrame works of art using only facial effluvium and creativity. My roommate, for instance, only recently discovered that our bathroom mirror frame did not in fact have a paisley pattern worked upon it in low relief. Or rather, that it DID, but simply had not been that way at the moment of purchase. He still gags when he thinks about the gently curdled and yellowed pile of minute maggots nestled in the tissue after I made a wipe across the frame with it. Sure, it upset 6 months of work, but there will be more.

There are always more.

Ha'pint brought up the "pock-marked" reference from an earlier post, and felt like I must be describing her. To be fair, she cultivates an admirable crop of diminuitive and deep pimples with every cycle of panty-plague and school, work and home related stress. But it was not her I referred to, but myself. The craters on my face will become, like my mother's, more pronounced with age and misjudgement, but for now, both Ha'pint and myself are more or less "passing" in the world of lesser-blighted people. It is entirely due to inspired application of cosmetics and advantageous light.

Plus, she's got this thing going on with her bangs... If her forehead was the Titanic, which it almost is, then imagine the hair she has combed over one side of it at a jaunty angle to be the deluge of passengers jockeying for position to get the hell off the ship before it sinks. These are the sort of bangs which provide very particular and effective pimple cover all on their own. I've never seen a zit under them (who could?) but I imagine it would be like stumbling upon a small but fiercely independent group of refugees hiding in a tent from immigration officials.

The Money Shot:
Women and men in 17th and 18th century France used little black pieces of felt cut into whimsical shapes to cover their facial imperfections. They would paste them onto whatever they didn't feel like was up to the sexy standard the rest of their "look" set, which usually included a shit-ton of powder, wigs, hideous lip-paint, mouthwash made from human piss (Portugese was best!) and cosmetics made from arsenic.
This is what you looked like if you had money to really fix yourself up.

Always Bring a Friend

"A..........un? Th.. --- ur Mother! Ca...-------- me?"

"Mom? Is that you? What?"

"Ah....... un!! D....----...(sounds not unlike those of a masticating lion if it had a microphone shoved up its ass to record the chewing noises) ... !!!"

"Mom, I don't know where you are, or what the fuck you're doing, but I can't hear you. Or at least, I hope I can't. I'm hanging up. Love you. Bye."

I returned to what I was doing, which if memory serves me correctly, comprised of organizing my collection of comic book trading cards according to "coolness." The reprieve was short-lived, however.

"Can you ...--..-...--- now?"

"No, not really. Where are you?"

"...---.....--- HEAR ME?!"

"NO. I CAN NOT. GO AWAY UNTIL YOU HAVE SOME DECENT RECEPTION!"

"I SAID, CAN YOU HEAR ME?!"

"That's better. Mom, it's.. (Holy Hell!! It was solidly 11:45! And it was a Saturday night! My Mother usually goes to bed at times that the Amish consider excessively early!) it's 11:45! Jesus, Mom what the crap are you doing up? And why is your reception so shitty? Are you at Berle's? Is everything okay?"

**Background.... My Mother at this point in her life, spent her weekends as the primary caregiver for an octegenerian half-uncle named Berle, called "Berlie." He was a parsimonious hoarder who lived alone after the death of his morbidly obese diabetic daughter, "Morlene". Morlene, called "Reener" from birth, had also been a hoarder, and had amassed an astonishing and horrific collection of Ashton-Drake porcelain dolls, even as she'd sloughed off a succession of neither-limbs and appendages as offerings to the Diabetic Dieties. Added to these was Berle's stash of rotted pecans, canned goods that spanned 5 different presidential administrations and small plastic baggies of his own bloody toenail clippings. He lived next door to the church he'd attended all his life, so being a shut-in (except on Sundays) really suited him. What he saw of the world came through his television set, the bits of trash his homeless VFW buddy, Robert brought in for him to hoard, and my Mother, whose main functions were to carefully document his bowel movements using the traditional "gold star" method, take him to the grocery store, and by stealth and cunning, to carry the trash Robert brought in, back out.


"Mom? Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you fine! You're never going to believe where I am!"

"Okay, where are you?"

"I'm driving with Berle up and down Catfish Country Road, trying to get away from Drugs Pirates!"

"...What?"

"Wooooooo!!! Ain't this fun, Berlie? (Muffled sounds of my elderly Great-Uncle, obviously not having fun.)"

"Mom? Are you okay?"

"Oh, we just had the best time! We went to the grocery store and got us a can of sausage for in the morning, and some of those frozen biscuits I like, and some grape jelly and a pack of gold stickers for Berlie's calender."

"So why are you out driving at midnight? Are you lost?"

"No! I told you we're on.."

"I heard that part. WHY are you still out driving?"

"Because those Drugs Pirates* saw me with their Drugs."
*seriously, the term she used throughout the conversation.

"Mom, I love you. I don't know what you're talking about, and I have a feeling I'd like to. So what the fuck are you doing and WHY are you doing it? And what do you mean 'drugs?'"

"Don't say "fuck!" It sounds like trash."

"Right. 'Drugs.' Explain."

"....------...awenooidn......"

"Mom? What? HELLO?"

"...------ FUCK THIS GODDAMN PIECE OF SHIT PHONE!"

"Mom... maybe you should stop driving."

"It's not the driving it this piece of shit phone. And I can't stop here."

"Why can't you pull over? Are you sure you're not lost?"

(Sound of Berle furiously mumbling from the passenger seat of my Mother's Mercedes.)

"Berlie doesn't want us to stop here. We're in nigger-town."

"Jesus fucking CHRIST just tell me why you called?!"

"That's what I'm trying to do. Berle and me were at the grocery over in Boger City. We don't like that new place."

"Of course you don't. Why should you? It's clean and well-stocked. So you drove 10 minutes out of your way to go to the shittiest grocery store in town and..."

"Berlie had a coupon."

"Fine. Please continue."

"So we get there and it's late, and dark and we were gonna go in and out reeeeal quick. We got us a buggy and went to the doors and that's when I found the brick of Marra-wanna. It looked just like a green brick, didn't it Berlie?"
(Muffled screams from the passenger seat.)

"OH, SHIT! Me and Berlie almost hit one of them!"

"One of what? A black person?"

"No! A possum."

"Okay... seriously, please start driving back to Berle's house. You're scaring him and me, and I'm not even in the car."

"I'm driving back, but I've gotta tell you this! So we found the brick of Marra-wanna, and I put it in the baby-seat on my buggy and pushed it around the store. I knew it was Marra-wanna because it smelled like my brother. I remember that smell... anyway, so I pushed it around and around while we shopped and pretty soon, all them boys that works there was followin' us around just like a parade! They all wanted to look at my green grass baby in it's seat!"
(Mom guffaws and hoots.)

"You've got to be kidding. You seriously found a fucking SLAB of weed at a grocery store and you pushed it around like a baby? For how long?!"

"Until we checked out. That's when the manager came up and said that we couldn't buy it and he took it. All them boys was sad. They bagged my sausage and the biscuits and the jelly and the stickers and OH! I also got some of that spicy mustard. They bagged it and we were going to leave, but then I looked out the windows and saw a bunch of flashlights just a'FLASHIN. Right out in the parking lot! So that's when I knew me and Berlie was in danger. So I asked them boys to escort us out and they did, and then I pulled out of the parkinglot reeeeeal sneaky like, and got about half-way home. We were almost at the Court House and I saw the lights in my mirror!"

"Like, a cars' headlights?"

"Yes! Right behind us! So I knew we'd been followed! So I decided those Drugs Pirates weren't going to take me and Berlie without a fight! He cooked on a battleship in the War! He's a soldier! So I took off and whipped around the court-square 7 or 8 good times til I got my speed up and threw them off... then I took off and we've been driving all around to confuse them ever since."


I'll skip ahead to the part where my Mother, finally at Berle's house, safe and hyper from her brush with the Pirates, continued her conversation with me regarding the evening's fun. It was the end of the conversation and she'd re-hashed (pun intended) the events gleefully several times. These were her parting words to me.

"I'll tell you what... I've never done anything so brave. But I wish I'd kept the Marra-wanna. I kind of want to take some after all I went through for it."


Post-script panoply:
Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia never fucked a horse. She did, however, keep a gnarly, unwashed, one-eyed retired Military Man named Grigory Potemkin around for a few years as her principle lover. When they got tired of each other, he naturally moved into the vacant post of "Royal Pimp," spending the remainder of his grungy years hand-picking Catherine's lovers.

I don't want to think about the screening process.

Hurry up, Ha'pint! We miss you!

New Feature! Heinous Fuckery from the World of Print

Today heralds a whole new feature for The Crotch Rot, one that I have been contemplating since the inception of this prosaic wasteland. As you, my loyal minions know, I pass my days at a venerable local new and used book purveying institution we shall refer to as "Booxieland." Booxieland is a fan-fucking-tastic place to work, as it affords me nearly endless opportunities to mock the various wreckages of humanity who shop at book stores, as well as a chance to practice new material on my co-workers; a motley band of physically, socially and mentally frustrated outsiders. We count among our current and past ranks a handful of matrimonially challenged mothers in assorted cup sizes, Crazy Cousin Vicky who killed a tree using only her mind and a 2x4, a pathological liar, an over-sexed, pock-marked sociopath (me!), a public hoarder who may belong to a cult, a married couple who both resemble 1950's Japanese movie monsters, and a goat-fucker all united under the leadership of our oft-kilted and pony-tailed esteemed leader, The Laird, in a never-ending quest to provide excellent customer service to the morons who shop with us.
But while the work environment is a constant smorgasbord of awesomeness, there is, in fact, an even greater benefit to working at Booxieland: the books. No, not the cosseted and bland best-sellers that cross the trade desk, nestled in an equally offensive nest of paper-back formulaic romances, science fiction tales and "action-suspense" novels. The books that catch my eye are the really groovy books that somehow, somewhere, got published in flagrant disregard to public taste or reason. Maybe its an incredibly ill-conceived cover or author photo. Perhaps a page or two of dialogue is the stuff of dreams and legends. Mayhaps an illustration or several in the interior set it apart in general freakishness. These are the books that make Booxieland the Best Little Bookstore in the South-East.
And these are the books that will be considered, one at a time in our new feature:
Heinous Fuckery from the World of Print!
First up, a true jewel of a tract from that swingin' year of 1971!



Innocuous enough cover... apparently Mr. Lovett is keen on taking back "White Power" in addition to squelching the blight of crime, sex and dope. Too bad the prohibition against dope didn't apply to the type-setter hired for
this
job
.
Moving on, we approach the simple instructions that Mr. Lovett has presented to us in order to help the sinful public understand the best way to use his book. Not simply satisfied with the application of extremely aggressively worded hyper-conservative Christian piffle, he goes further and offers extremely helpful tools to the rest of us, incapable of following the prose.



As you see, the Holy Spirit, widely held to be a sort of invisible zombie-format Jesus, dwells in the crotch of this really ominous, unnecessarily large set of nutcrackers. Yep, let it soak in... "crotch" and "nutcrackers." Keep that general theme of emasculation in mind. But the illustration does help; we are to be aware at all times that our greed for freshly shelled pecans may just bring about a second crucifixion of Christ, this time with razor-sharp nut shells causing the stigmata. But wait! What does this have to do with reigning in my unruly teenager, Mr. Lovett? Do you have some sort of additional illustration that may clarify your position on the "package-punishment-teeny bopper" triumverant of evil?



Ah! Okay! Much better. So the teenager is the "nut!" Haha! Very good, sir!

But I digress. The whole point of this book is discipline of teens, and not just any teens but Jerry and Judy, two pathologically unlucky, disadvantaged kids if ever there were any. Try as they may, they just couldn't get past the iron fist of parental instruction in the home. Time to meet the kids!



Hey! It's Jerry! The extremely well-groomed young man who appears as a disembodied head with a bright future and an aching jaw. Times are tough for Jerry at home; his folks just don't seem to understand. But hey, they aren't perfect... it says so right there on the child protective services folder photograph. Jerry didn't just have trouble with dad, though.



"Gosh, Mom! You know how much I hate having to watch you salute the tiny photograph of Hitler while standing with absolutely no irony under the Disneyland pennant... Oh! Ouch! Now I see. You used to be cool mom... I really wish you'd stop reading that literature dad keeps bringing home. I think wearing short sleeves means you're a whore... OUCH! Okay, okay! I repent!"

But Jerry's troubles were far from over. Here's an image of our young hero, trying desperately to catch a few winks in the backseat of the family Nova Wagon.



Here's a helpful passage from the book:



Geez! This kid is Satan's fucking penis or something! What a rotten egg! I mean, obviously, this kid is nothing but trouble. The mind eventually takes in the whole paragraph... "water from a hose...", " stealing food from the fridge..." (but that food's for the FAMILY!), "30 days on just water until he hears the voice of the Spirit?!" What the hell did this kid do?!



Fair enough. Hey... weren't there TWO kids? Of course! Judy, the penitential slut who inexplicably must always be photographed from behind, with emphasis on her legs. Let's see what's happening with Judy these days!



No young lady, you can't. Not til you take those pants and love beads off and wear your burlap mu-mu like a good little bride of Christ. I can tell by that look in your eye... you've been to YOUTH CAMP, haven't you?! You know what that leads to!



Shiiiiiiiittttttt. This is officially the first time I regret not getting involved with organized religion. But this does offer an interesting take on the play of good and evil in the average congregation... "Pray hard enough and Satan will make you fuck the Preacher's son?" Never fear, though. Judy's parents soon found a thoughtful and appropriate way to deal with her burgeoning sexuality.



Oh, something tells me she did. Over and over.

This wraps up our tupenny book review! Godspeed, Judy and Jerry... Godspeed.


After-dinner mint:
My mother widely holds the belief that "Assorted" is in fact, a kind of thing. For instance, she delights in Assorted Fruit Jam, admires the foliage on the elusive Assorted Shade Tree, and has at least on one occasion, yearned for the singular sensation of an Assorted Chocolate. Nothing else will do.

Dumbasses of the latter 16th century;Englisher Edition

Ha'pint has been gone for three days now, and in honor of such, I dedicate this post to her noble sacrifice on the altar of good family relations. Some people have orgies or write a post-card. Ha'pint is hard-core. She's locking herself with them, Steve Irwin style, in a monkey-freaking cabin in NEW YORK. Where no one will ever hear her screams, except for the people making her scream, of course. Excelsior, Ha'pint!


Next up in our engaging series on stupid fuckers of the latter Tudor period, I present for your approval the "English Edition." Same great flavor of the "Scottish Edition" with half the sodomy.



The Cloptons of Clopton were pretty much fucked from the moment they thought of naming themselves the "Cloptons of Clopton." But Fate wasn't quite through with them yet. The Cloptons have the dubious distinction of providing the inspiration for "Romeo and Juliet" a relatively unknown play by William Shakespeare. And just what was it about the Cloptons of Clopton that caught the attention of the Noble bard? Was it because of a looooove match between two warring families? No. Was it due to a tragic double-suicide between star-crossed teenagers? No again.

It was because they accidentally buried their daughter alive.
But it was an accident!

See, their kid (lets call her "McKayla") caught the plague, and times being what they were, the touching death-bed farewell was more like an abbreviated three-stooges skit with assorted parties getting knocked down, picked up by their noses and knocked down again. Buckets of water were possibly thrown and a priest or two may have been called. After what we can safely assume was a lack-luster administration of the Last Rites, she was pronounced "out of the office indefinitely." They buried the girl in "indecent haste" in the family crypt, presumably keeping the door cracked for future use. (C'mon... we got this plague on! Shit was brutal!) Upon re-entering the crypt some days later when they went to throw in another cord or two of Clopton hash, some looky-loo who was obviously not around the day they decided McKayla was dead, noticed that something was 'different'. It was quickly discovered that in the ensuing week or so, she had gotten up, walked to a wall, sat down, and died with a bit more gusto than the first effort.

But not before biting "a tender piece of meat" out of her own fucking shoulder. (A girl's gotta keep a little air of mystery and intrigue about her.)

Some generations later, proving that the 'Stoopid Gene' can't be simply waited out, the same family produced another ill-fated chit, this one named Margheretta. She apparently became distraught when Mumsey and Dadsey wouldn't let her 'consort' with (give blow jobs, sticky Hitlers, dirty Sanchezes, cowtails, pink sleeves, flying horse-pies, angry coppers, brick slaps, ring-tosses, sock salads or juicy fruit shuffles to) her boyfriend. After carefully considering all of her options, she flung herself into the family well, where her bloated corpse remained for years because conditions were "too wet" to fish it out. (That would be a contemporary account of the circumstances the good Cloptons faced. "Too Wet." Really.)

And don't think for a second that they weren't still drinking that water. These were the Elizabethans, fuckers. They did whatever the hell they wanted.


Have a little something to cleanse the palate:

A few random Laws of Spurious Virtue from New York's past and present:
* Pinball machines are not to be played on Sunday. (Ocean City)
* During a concert, it is illegal to eat peanuts and walk backwards on the sidewalks. (Greene)
* New Yorkers cannot dissolve a marriage for irreconcilable differences, unless they both agree to it. (State Law)
* It is illegal to disrobe in a wagon. (Sag Harbor)
* It is illegal for a father to call his son a “faggot” or “queer” in an effort to curb “girlie behavior. (Staten Island...and I can assure the Statenites that this is really a futile effort. When you've got more than 3 kinds of "Broadway" in your state, the boys is gonna be fruity.)
* You may only water your lawn if the hose is held in your hand. (Also Staten Island, and I hope completely unrelated to the one above.)

Sweet Nostalgia

In honor of my pal Ha'pint, The Crotch Rot is on a tentative day-to-day schedule for the duration of her family vacation. Rock on, Ha'pint...rock on. And good luck with Uncle Lymphoma.






"I have a huge favor to ask. You can't tell anyone what this is about."

"Okay! Shoot!"

"Seriously, Choll. You can't tell ANYONE."

"I said 'okay!' What is it?!"

"Okay... I talked to my mom, and she said I need you to pop the thing on my ass."


The voice on the phone was that of my roommate and erstwhile girlfriend, The Bride. Joy is quite insufficient as a word to describe my elation. This wasn't any run-of-the-mill zit or boil. This was a massive, pulsating, blistered ulcer-looking motherfucker that had emerged from the otherwise smooth terrain of my ex-girlfriend's ass like a tumorous submarine breaking the surface of a calm ocean. It even had a faintly death-like smell.

She'd spent days hobbling about the apartment, developing the kind of gingerly prance usually associated with homosexual broadway stage lackeys and professional race-horse jockeys. And through it all I had offered many, many times to "do" something about it. But alas, the fear in her eyes as I brandished manicure scissors and upholstery needles anticipated a definite "NO, NOT ON YOUR FUCKING LIFE."

Hence, that magical day when she finally was unable to sit even long enough to drive the 10 minutes it took her to get to work.

So, an hour after the phone call demanding discretion, I stood at the ready for a spot o'home surgery. The sofa bed was pulled out and covered in a red blanket that would theoretically hide the blood-stains. I had the tools of my trade spread out on the seat of a peeling green wooden chair; sewing needle, tweezers, Swiss army knife, fore-mentioned manicure scissors, fork and a lighter for sanitary purposes were nestled on a beach towell, also for sanitary purposes. For sterilization and pain management I had a quarter of a bottle of Smirnoff Vodka at the ready.

The Bride approached the sofa bed with grim determination, threw off the Harry Potter sleep-pants and "Tuesday!" underwear that stood between me and my meat-work, and with a sigh and a tremble, she lay across the mattress.

It was around this point that I began madly giggling. It was decided that we should all have some vodka.

The outer-most skin was slippery, thin and almost paper-like in its capacity to tear. All I had to do was pop the largest of the puss-pockets clinging to the film of bubbled skin and use the needle and scissors to move the chunkier pieces out of the way. To my surprise, the under-layer was an even more complex network of pockets, bubbles arranged like high-rise slums over a fetid street of Mexico-grade general slime.

I remember the barely-audible ::pop:: that each little pillow of puss made as I squeezed it in the tweezers. The occasional application of vodka to ass and mouth kept things mostly calm during this juncture, which was good because right about then, shit got weird. One of the little pockets of spider-spoo was occupied by what appeared to be a leg or mandible or some other fuckery from the spider itself. With the diligence and care of an archaeologist, I eventually excavated most of an entire mutant insect from the festering confetti of her butt-cheek. It was pretty fucking gnarly.

I was excited by this development. So excited that I may have gouged Em's cheek a bit with the fork. But she was shlitzed by that point, riding on alternating waves of pain, vodka and nausea, so I celebrated my victory on behalf of archnaphobics everywhere in solitude.

Moral of the story? Don't ask someone to dig Noah's Ark out of your ass and keep it a secret. Seriously.

Wacky shit to consider:
George Washington spent about 25% of his annual salary on booze every year he was in the White House. This was on top of an entertaining budget, provided by Congress. In all fairness, if you woke up next to Martha and that insipid little lace doily every morning, you'd need to be shit-faced by noon too.

9-2-5

Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckfuck fuckity fuckerstein!!!

These were my thoughts on my very first day of work at a picture framing shop in the "big city." Let's call it "Frames Unlimited." And the fuck soliloquy was for good reason. I had just dropped a huge piece of broken glass straight down into the top of my leather 'Mary Jane' shoe. The glass sported a fantastical curve and a wicked point. It lodged nicely in betwixt the bones of the top of my foot and hummed gently as it settled into the meat.

Fuuuuuuuuuuck.

This shit hurt. Happy glass winked at me in the light. The self-mutilating Goth kid in my sick head celebrated the nice play of blood and lymph on the glass. The pimply woman in me wearing a wrinkled button-down shirt and "nice" jeans trying desperately to look like a grown up wanted to cry. But it wasn't the pain that brought on the Fuckery. I slowly pulled the piece of glass out of the fresh, new gash in my foot. The wound looked like a small, tender vagina. I may have said "awwww!" (It was awfully cute.) But then, in the treacherous manner of vaginas everywhere, it filled with blood. And more blood. And then more. It wouldn't fucking STOP.

Cut ahead to me, 10 minutes later, feigning wet fart sounds to justify my prolonged presence in the bathroom, trying to stuff enough brown paper towels into my shoe to sop up enough blood to minimize the O.J. Simpson tracks I was leaving in my wake. It was futile. It already looked like a crime scene and was slowly ripening to 'sloppy-joe day at the sanatorium' territory. I couldn't tell the new bosses that I had dropped glass on my foot... they'd figure out that I was a dumbass and fire me. I briefly considered trying to convince them that I had come to work that way, but dismissed the idea as impractical. They'd already seen me give a friend the "high kick high five," an incredible and powerful demonstration of convivial affection that would certainly have revealed the presence of what by now looked like a maxi-pad for the homeless.
Nope... best just be honest, and pretend that it never happened.
So I gather my shreds of calm and confidence about me like the torn prom dress of a monolingual foreign exchange student (no means si, Manuela...) and make my way back out to the work room, executing the classic "un-limp" to cleverly disguise my gimp paw. This naturally results in a sort of exotic, jerky perambulation, not unlike the "Buffet Shuffle" performed by millions of Pension Pimps every Tuesday afternoon at the K&W Cafeteria.
In the down time between impromptu performances of my new walk, I keep an eye out for shreds of maroon-spattered paper towel laying on the floor like the after-party from Mafia Autumn. I like to think I was subtle.
I managed to get in a few good hours of this shit before I noticed that my new 60 year old boss was limping too. He'd been limping all morning. In fact, he had been limping since 1945, when he was diagnosed as a small child with Polio. We had not yet reached the stage of our relationship where he got drunk and puked in my face as I gave him head one night; these were the tremulous, early days.
He looked at me with watery, bulbous blue eyes, not unlike an Aryan pug. With precise, hairless, strangely pink and shiny hands he reached to his right, pulling a little packet out of a drawer. His eyes never left mine for a moment as he tearfully, slowly ripped the packet open and swallowed the contents. Pills. He flung the empty paper packet back onto the work table. My eyes broke from his at last as I read the print on the envelope.

"Fem-First Women's Daily Supplement."

Fuck indeed.



Shit on the side:

Henry VIII scored his first wife when his older brother died shortly after the wedding, having apparently not secured the little woman's cherry. So Henry did the sporting thing and took care of it, causing no end of problems that lasted for decades. Not to be outdone 400 years later, Princess Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes (May) of Teck was due to wed that stalwart sprig of British Royal Hotness, Albert Victor of Wales. Despite NOT being named "John," he died, and just before the wedding at that. What's a mail-order bride to do? Why, marry his brother George (later King George V), of course! So far, so good. Maybe the trick is marrying your dead brother's girlfriend instead of his widow outright.

Dumbasses of the latter 16th century; Scottish Edition

Long ago, in a Western European country far, far away, lived a bunch of mother fuckers who couldn't get their shit together. These where hard times; there was all the shit we deal with now, (ugly babies, fat chicks, STD's and Metrosexuals) only smellier. That's right, it stank. Literally. Like ass. Everywhere, all the time. It stank so bad that people used their own fecal matter to treat their plague. Why? Because it was handy, as they were sleeping in piles of it, and it stuck to the boils nicely. Also, they couldn't tell that it stank, really, because everything stank.
But the odiferous qualities of Medieval Europe are for another day. Mainly, this post exists to celebrate the first of a few choice "WTF?!" moments in 16th century European history. Let's start with a little somethin' for the laddies...

Mary, Queen of Scots
or How to be a Royal Dumbass

When first she returned to Scotland, the land of her birth, Mary had a lot going for her. She was tall, sexy, and she'd just recently enjoyed a stint as Queen of France as part of an extended trip abroad. She'd been a Frenchie since infancy, and couldn't quite relate to the Scottish way o' life. France in the 1500's was pretty much like France now; cafe, cafe, fop, jewelled fop, cafe, freak in a beret. Scotland in the 1500's was pretty much like Afghanistan now. Only with more rubble and a generally lower opinion of the rights of women. (Especially if those women are Queen of Scotland.) So "culture shock" doesn't really describe it. Suffice to say, Mary was quite contrary.
Her untreatable Uppity Bitch Syndrome (UBS) prevented her from seeing that her efforts to tart-up Scotland weren't going so well, that her craggy, sheep-buggering subjects hated her, and that John Knox wasn't the only one who wanted to slap her, fuck her, and throw her in the Inverness. Pretty much the only thing the Scottish liked was the fact she married her cousin, Henry, and only then because the Scottish are rednecks at heart, and also because it pissed off the English Queen, Elizabeth. (The one thing the Scottish like more than pissing off each other is pissing off the English. They liked the berets too, but that's not important.) So she goes all "West Virginia" and marries Henry, who used to be "Lord Darnley" only now he's married to a Queen, so he figures that makes him King.
Not quite.
So there was a lot of fuss, and he killed her best friend in front of her while she was 7 months pregnant with their baby, and she said he was an fuck-tard, and he said she was a whore, and it all went along smashingly until she crapped out the baby and Darnley started on the whole "King me" thing again. This was before "911" was an option, so she had to figure out another way to handle their frequent front-yard domestic disputes.
So she talked to some people and had Darnley blown up.
Then she married the guy who blew him up.
Then pretty much the entire country of Scotland wanted to blow her up.
(Cue John Knox laughing hysterically.)
Mary did the only thing she could do... she ran away.
And where did she run? Back to France, where she was raised, and where she still had a huge, loving family?
No.
Okay, maybe to Rome! She was a devout Catholic, after all, and she had a few cousins who were Arch-Bishop of Whatnot...
Nope.
Okay, where then?
Why the only place in the known world where she was even more reviled than Scotland!
ENGLAND!!
That's right. After making her short career as Queen of the Scots all the more memorable by managing to piss off her cousin Queen Elizabeth I of England virtually every other month, Mary did the logical thing and turned to her for help. And Elizabeth did help, by imprisoning Mary for 20 years and politely over-looking her occasional half-assed efforts to seize the English throne.

Until Elizabeth had her be-headed.
If it was good enough for mama, it's good enough for you, Uppity Bitch.


More on Scotland another time.

Panty Crickets

What is a whore, really? I was raised to believe that the difference between good girls and sluts was something that only a slut would know. As a self-proclaimed "good girl," my mom could offer very little insight. Nor did she particularly try. "Whores," she once said, tasting the words carefully, "are girls who use tampons." This was shocking news, especially since I was three years into a very secret transition to womanhood and had been buying tampons on the black-market from my friend Bette at a ridiculous mark-up after paper towels proved unreliable.
She sensed the significance and sacred bonding opportunity of the occasion and continued by delivering the "sex" talk I had been waiting on for over five years, ever since the first appearance of a single, ominous black hair on my labia, bent like a suicidal ninja right over the edge of the "ravine" when I was 10.

"Now that you're becoming a woman, your puss is going to smell bad."

My mother pronounced "puss" like "pussy" without the 'y'. It's one of her favorite words, although most often heard in the full context of "Old nasty puss," which could mean either an older woman who was presumably nasty and had female genitalia of questionable cleanliness, or simply ANY vagina, with the "old" taking the form of a friendly nick-name. Like "Old Yeller" or "Old MacDonald."
I was 15 at the time, and pretty certain that my mother was bat-shit crazy. Not about that smell, though. Being a filthy kid for at least the first couple of years of The Bleed, I had quickly picked up on all the potential downsides to spending an unwashed week every month shooting pooter-phlegm and waste-product-grade blood out of my cootch. So my mother's pep talk did little to clarify either womanhood or whoredom, and only cemented further her detachment from what I liked to call "reality." I glared at her from between my bangs (cut by my own hand while listening to "Zombie" by the Cranberries on repeat one night because I thought short greasy hair hanging over my face made me look more "intense") and over the bent frames of my over-size oval wire-rimmed glasses and shrieked "I HATE YOU FOR SAYING 'PUSS!' YOU DON'T KNOW ME!"

My mother licked her lips, painted the color of newborn mice, and hissed "You just wait."

And I did wait. Mostly by necessity. But luckily, other of my acquaintances didn't. Bette, my cotton dildo dealer, was a small cog in a giant, Italian Catholic machine. She had more cousins than most rabbits do, and one of them, "Mario," deflowered her during the commercial break of an episode of "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air." They were 13 and there remains to this day a question of how much penetration is necessary for it to "count" but I call shenanigans on that shit. I saw his dick during a game of truth or dare 6 months later. It counts.
She eventually started perming her hair and stealing cigarettes, jumping from "mildly incestuous with a chance of loose" to "Pink Lady" in like, 5 seconds. But she was my only source of information, as she was my only friend who wasn't on the "Nick Nolte's DUI Photo" beauty regime.
Bette proved to be unreliable long-term. She was too Catholic to be wholly comfortable with what she was doing and too bad a liar to convince me otherwise. But her transformation could not be overlooked.
My first go at sex was at the local rock quarry, with my then-boyfriend Eugene, in the front seat of his incredibly small, shitty car. It was a "teal" blue Mercury Tracer, with a committed "Tasmanian Devil" theme. The boyfriend had further carried the motif as far as his own bicep, where he sported a poorly rendered image of "Taz" pulling down a banner that read "Camel." (His preferred brand of cigarettes.) I didn't need to see the tattoo to know that though, because I could clearly read the side of the cigarette he was smoking as we coupled.
"Trust me," he grunted around the filter of his cigarette, "You don't want to do this for the first time outside."
That was sound advice. The area outside the car was littered with the detritus of other romantic encounters; empty beer cans, discarded socks, ripped underwear, the occasional used condom, fishing lures. But Eugene meant the outdoors in general, and since he'd had sex exactly two times prior to this, both times in the woods around the Army base his Dad was stationed at, he was the acknowledged authority in the car.
So at the age of 17, dodging falling tobacco ash in a car parked on the crumbling perimeter of a massive crater filled with neon-blue ersatz "water," I pawned my hymen for a chance at a more exciting, fulfilling future as a slut.

But these things are never as easy as they seem at first. It eventually came to my attention, after Eugene's follow-up insemination sessions in a field, on a roof, in the bed of an abandoned pick-up truck, on a trampoline and in the bathroom of our high school auditorium, that REAL sluts diversified their portfolios. So I compelled his best friend to drive me to Virginia in the worst blizzard that that state had seen in 150 years, where I slipped him the pink taco. We then drove back home, oblivious to both the tractor-trailer trucks careening behind us without brakes on the icy interstates, and the A.P.B. that my mother had put out on his car after I failed to materialize at a family gathering OR answer my phone. We arrived back home, nearly a day later, after a somewhat tense car ride during which we were both trying to think of suitable lies to tell our parents to put as much blame as possible on each other.
He dropped me off in my driveway, and I staggered to the door, reflecting on the ignominy of showing up for an ass-beating without panties on. My mother was the first to greet me as I got to the door. She only hesitated a moment before slapping me, and only a moment more before screaming "WHO DOES THIS? TELL ME, WHO DOES SHIT LIKE THIS?! I'LL TELL YOU WHO DOES THIS! TRASH! TRASH AND WHORES!!!"

I didn't even try to stop smiling.


Hey hey!! It's the random shit show-down back for your viewing pleasure!
17th century Spanish court dress frowned upon the use of tits. Young girls were subjected to rigorous corseting, including having lead (yes, lead) panels sewn into the fronts of their gowns to help flatten the works. I truly believe this resulted in centuries of confusion about what the fuck is it, exactly, that women are after. Can you imagine some Don Juan or the other popping the seal on a Spanish chick, only to get her down to her skivvies and hear the tell-tale *clang* of pot-metal hit the floor?
Spanish Stud-ino: "What the ever-loving FUCK are you wearing?!"
Spanish Tart-ella: "Just some sheet metal... it's cool! We're all cool here. Now why don't you come over here and..."
Spanish Stud-ino: "Why the fuck do you have sheets of metal in your fucking dress? What, are you in witness protection or something?"
Spanish Tart-ella: "I have it, you know, to smash my tits flat. So they aren't you know, THERE."
Spanish Stud-ino: "... Screw this shit. I'm doing men from now on. Peace out."
Spanish Tart-ella: "*sob!*"

Scenes from Oregon, Part III

Scene #4: The Agony and the Ecstasy

The deliciousness of Portland Oregon is a never-ceasing mind fuck of good and bad, clean and dirty, salty and sweet. Much like sex with a midget on an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Here, in this final instalment of "Scenes from Oregon," I present the "Portland Round-up;" random shit that made a difference to me.

* Thank you, oh ye Gods of bike-riding girls, for giving Portland the gift of mild seasonal heat, that the girls of thy fair city should only be comfortable in short cotton dresses. And thus they did ride their bikes, with their panties on the seat, and the whole works visible as one travels about the city. Bless you. Bless ALL of you. (Except for the fucking Brunhilda who was my unfortunately chubby FIRST "pantie pirate." YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE. PUT DOWN THE HAM AND BUY SOME FUCKING SHORTS.)


* The Rose Garden. Especially the first visit. The second round later that day which included swimmin' with immigrant children in what turned out to be an ornamental fountain was incredible, particularly since everyone present knew that this was their bath for the week. But the first time had me at "hello."


* ...Shit. I just forgot the name of this store... somebody help me out. It's OH! It's "Billy Galaxy!" Okay. Billy Galaxy is a sensationally amazing, super-nostalgic coma-inducing shop right across the way (at a diagonal) from Powell's. I have cruised by, on wheels and feet quite a few times on my various visits, and NEVER has the damn place been open. My hosts (and now Newlyweds) in Portland LIVE there, and they've never caught the doors open either. This has been the topic of many a conversation. Some of which were conducted from the sidewalk in front of Billy Galaxy, only a few feet away from the tantalising turn-table of "My Little Pony" and "Voltron" flotsam.("But..but... the sign says '6:00 p.m.' and it's only 4:00 p.m.! How can they be closed?) Heart-breaking. Anyway, so I find myself in front of the familiar, panty-soaking toxically shimmering awesomeness of 1980's childhood memorabilia, and...the door is open!
That's right... I've been Billied. And it was all I dreamed it would be. (And so much more! Oh, the Strawberry Shortcake! Ah, the She-Ra action figures!) My one gripe is the presumed proprietor, whom I may have overwhelmed with my enthusiastic gushing. "OHMYGOD!! YOU'RE REALLY OPEN!!" Maybe he doesn't like crazy chicks, because home-skillet looked down his 1980's retro-childhood nose at me and insisted that the store had NEVER been closed during normal business hours. He seemed pretty pissed that I even brought up my passion for seeing the place, so I turned my fancy to the stuff rather than the man, which is what the 1980's was all about anyway. And it was fantastic. Sigoth snagged some sweet Japanese robot pencil-topper guys (I totally scored one off of him later... SUCKER!!) but my take-away of a thousand remembered hours in front of the family wood-veneered Zenith on a Saturday morning was waaaay better (and FREE!).


* I'm tone-deaf, (and maybe just plain deaf depending on who's asking) so my turn at the Karaoke bar was life-changing for a lot of people. Somewhere between the dress, which fit like a bedazzled condom, and the song (9 to 5 by Dolley Parton) I like to think that I created a mood and a moment not likely to be replicated soon. Unless you have a diplomatic passport and a penchant for reenacting the "special dance" of your dominatrix Auntie.


* Powell's Books. Ahh, Powell's... how you have colored my dreams. The selection! The deep, dark, twisty aisles bursting with bound volumes of marvels and folioed editions of fantasies! It's an orgasm for the soul. My first trip to Powell's was most fondly remembered for the discovery of an astonishing selection of books on the works of Hans Holbein the younger. (6!) This most recent visit shall be forever linked to memories of a highly tattooed and ear-plugged individual of the "dude" variety who was carrying on loud discourse with his friend, the Homely Girl.

Dude: "This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about. I'd rather kiss a smoker than a Meat-Eater."
Homely Girl: "It tasted like death."

Who knew? To be frank, these two should just have run away together, because they would be lucky to be kissed by anything, including a man made entirely of leftover organ meat who smokes.


* Those strawberries from Saturday market. Sure, I lost a couple of hours of my life that I'll never have back chopping the mouldering bastards up at the kitchen sink, but the flavor was extraordinary, as was the company at the sink. (The Blushing Bride, no less! Gettin' her fruit on like she wasn't The Bride and above all that mess. This is why I like these people.) Also, being an asshole, I greatly enjoyed carrying the heaving, bulging, massive boxes of berries away from the market and out to the van... past a bunch of sun-bathing earth-biscuits, all of whom followed those berries with something akin to lust in their eyes. Heh heh. Stupid hippies. Steal your own fruit.


* To the conveyor-belt operator with the fake badge on who insisted that my traveling companion's SEALED jar of 'Marionberry Jam' from the airport gift shop was too dangerous to be taken on board the shittiest aircraft I have ever seen, FUCK YOU. As a matter of fact, that goes for the entirety of the San Francisco airport, which was designed by Hitler's lieutenants as part of an elaborate scheme to kill him before they decided to just try blowing him up at a board meeting with his own briefcase instead. (True story! Actually, just the bomb part.) Seriously, it was foul. For reasons beyond my wildest speculation, the gate we needed was referenced in the smallest legible font they could manage on the massive signs oriented throughout the building. The arrows indicating our needed path pointed to things that weren't paths, such as walls, "wrong way" security check-points, and in one case, the ceiling. After several extremely vague conversations with airport personnel, we were finally put on the correct course for our gate... which turned out to be a make-shift path that actually routed us OUTSIDE THE AIRPORT. This was a pathetic path. I would have been perfectly content to see buxom, brown women carrying fruit and water jars on their heads on such a path in oh, say, BRAZIL. But in 'Frisco? The Land of Brotherly Buggery? Daaaammmmn. We barely caught our flight, despite a layover of nearly an hour. If the rest of San Francisco is anything like the airport, FUCK YOU San Francisco.

And Leslie, since Marionberry Jam is apparently the secret weapon of Hezbollah, next time, just buy the shit online. The F.B.I. is bound to stop watching you eventually.

Anyone watching for actual day-of wedding posting, keep it in your pants. One day, I will. It will probably flesh out the "Camp Wedding" post, or maybe I'll do something after a bit more time has passed. Either way, for now, this closes out "Scenes from Portland."

Scenes from Oregon, Part II *UPDATED ENDING!

Scene #3: Hobo-sexuals

I was 17 the first time I saw a real, live "homeless" person.
Let's be clear on this; homeless means a person who lives outside, all the time because that's their sole option. It does NOT mean a person who has a home they choose not to return to, or a teenager with dreadlocks who wants to spend the summer smoking weed while walking 18 miles a day and fucking girls who can't shave it because they are hippies but are somehow mysteriously on birth control (Are you on birth control? Then you probably aren't actually homeless.) or a person without a valid i.d. who's "crashing" with someone. Even if they aren't paying rent. Even if the couch monkey's name is Ray-Ray. I'm from an area of the American South East where both unemployed younger sons who live in their mother's basements and people named "Ray-Ray" are proliferate. While both groups are to be avoided, neither is actually homeless. I am related to at least 30 people who are living in or on things with wheels. They aren't homeless.
And while it can be difficult for an outsider to differentiate between a homeless man with a fancy for a fu-manchu and the average red-neck, to those of us on the V.D. side of the Bible Belt, it's pretty obvious. Consequently, I managed to go nearly 18 years without seeing a homeless person. There are reasons for this, I'm sure. I wasn't particularly well travelled as a child, and the American South is a fucking hideous place to live at least 5 months of the year if you don't have access to a box fan and a slushee. So imagine my delight when, upon departing the airport in England in 1999, I beheld, with mine own eyes, on the steps leading down to... London and junk (look, I was just happy to be there, okay?)a HOMELESS MAN! He had a tin cup at the ready, and a disengaged, vacant stare. I had a pocket full of what I was pretty sure was monopoly money and a positive genius for creating awkward social situations. I ran up to this man, allowing my eyes to feast on his ragged beard, tangled and pocked with what looked like raisins, his rheumy eyes, and discordant combination of sweater, slacks and trash-bag shoes. He was smelly... dirty... poorly dressed... he was an UNFUCKABLE!
I immediately swelled with pride at my first glimpse of the UK branch of our elite squad.

Me: "Are you a Hobo?! Like, a REAL Hobo?"
Hobo: " Fuck off, cooze."
Me: "You ARE a Hobo! HEY!! MISS.BRIDGES!! (my long-suffering spinster teacher and the trip leader) I found a HOBO!"
Miss. Bridges: "Please tell me you aren't doing what I think you're doing."
Me: " Can I give you money?"
Hobo: ::shakes cup::

The glow wore off after the 90th homeless/hobo/tramp that I encountered before getting into my very first cab, about 5 minutes later. (It was a cherry popping sort of day.)

For connoisseurs of "homeless chic," Portland provides a rare opportunity to view a seemingly endless assemblage of urchins, hobos, rapscallions, hags, beggars, runaways and vagabonds. These are punctuated by the occasional actual homeless person. They are easy to spot, as they are the people with long hair who are wearing clothing that ISN'T ripped, stained or patched. Also, they usually don't beg. (Begging is for hags. Hagging is for runaways and hobos. Urchins just hold out their pitifully chapped hands and offer to sell you matches. DON'T BUY THESE MATCHES. The quality is shitty.) Anyway, they don't so much beg, as invite you to consider the social relevance of where they are (the ground) versus where you are (not the ground.) From there, you can make a small contribution in an effort to save your soul, or you can continue to walk away and enjoy little, non-fatal doses of guilt.
The 'downwardly mobile disenfranchised' of Portland refuse to subscribe to the limiting notions of the "homeless look" popularized by Oscar the Grouch, Dick Van Dyke, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. They see limitless opportunities in self-improvement through clothing choice and accessorizing. Sure, you may have found the perfect shirt/skirt/swim-fins combo to establish your indigence, but what about the dog? That's right... you've gotta think ahead. Look among your motley menagerie. Which of the wretched mongrels is going to "sell" your vision? Something small and needy? It will remind the elitist bastards that we're the "little guys!" Something large, old and loyal? Add a splashy, nearly illegible "Homeless Gulf War Veteran" to your bit of cardboard and you've just reminded everyone that they owe SOMEBODY (maybe you?) a goddamn fiver for all this liberty and shit. There is of course, the old stand-by of multiple cats, but that can be tricky to manage unless you've been sleeping in the dumpster behind Captain D's for more than a month. Cats won't burrow in your multiple layers of clothing for long unless you smell like low-tide in Jersey. That's why this is a look best left for the ladies.
This wasn't my first visit to Portland, but I'm still a newbie at all the city has to offer. Especially it's offerings of wacky street folk. On the way back from the airport, I spied a 70-ish year old woman with huge curlers in her hair, bookin' it down the sidewalk with a panache one doesn't usually associate with the Septuagenarian crowd. Unless there was an early-bird special with her name on it somewhere, I can only assume her haste was in some way connected to the need to change her adult diaper. Or to put one on. There wasn't much room in the skin-tight black sequined spandex pants she wore for a pair of Depends. But the red and white striped "Where's Waldo?" shirt was voluminous in a way that only Theo Huxtable could have appreciated. A few days later, the Sig.Oth. and I were attempting to cross a street and somehow got embroiled in a hobo-throwdown. The Sig.Oth. took one guy and I took the other. By "took" I mean I stood several feet in front of my guy waving my arms while the Sig.Oth. grabbed his guy and helped him up out of the street (where he had been pushed). We then reassured our respective prize-fighters and said things like "Hey! It's cool, man!" and "Just calm down. It's cool!" Then, we wandered around aimlessly behind the one dude who was still screaming "QUEER!" for like, five minutes, because I didn't know that I was in charge of navigating. This turned out to be a lucky trick, because our circuitous route took us by yet another homeless guy, who had a collection of rubber newts arranged to advantage on the sidewalk in front of him at an intersection. I admired them, and he became excited and said "Finally! It's nice to meet someone who appreciates my work!" I assured him that I did and he adopted a posture of self-controlled modesty that wouldn't have been out of place on Mother Theresa, and said "I do what I can when the spirit moves me."
Chances are, the spirit is the color of anarchy, rhymes with "orange" and only appears after the concussion fairy comes in the night to help him fall asleep, but still. As a fan of "Mary Poppins," it was nice to be appreciated by a street artist.

* Updates! First, if you read this before Tuesday, July the 6th, I have re-written the ending so that it's slightly less shitty. In other business, I talked it over with some folks, and I think it would be better if I started using aliases for most of the proper nouns that are referenced in The Crotch Rot. Seems like the thing to do, and it gives me the chance to bash more people without them being able to actually get pissed and accuse me, then hit me in the mouth after I start lying about doing it. Also, the Sig.Oth. has determined that he likes that moniker so much, he just wants to be "Sigoth," which both of us assumed was an extremely esoteric Dungeons and Dragons monster. As it happens, it is popular coloquial slang for... "Significant Other." Shocking. So I have decided to press forward anyway, and in the spirit of the "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels of my youth, he's Sigoth, Destroyer of WORLDS!!!! His first official act as Sigoth is to patently declare that fake hobos should be called "Fauxbos," and he's totally right. Carry on.

Portland Organ, Part I

My vacation is officially over. This is evidenced by the Final Poop of Vacation. You know the one... you've been home a day or two, finally shaken the jet-lag, gotten back to work or school or selling drugs to kids, the normal routine. You're still pulling stuff out of your suitcase to use or wear, because you packed all the shit you look good in for the trip. You're going to wear it, dirty or not because that's a helluva lot easier than matching clothes from your closet or dresser, both of which may as well belong to someone else because you simply don't remember where anything is. And you wouldn't recognize it if you did. Why? Because you've been on VACATION.
So you wake up one morning, feelin' fine. You blink wearily at the photos hanging in their pleasant frames on the wall. You recognize one of them as your mother. Good! It's all coming back. You swing your feet to the floor, and make a bee-line for the toilet. It's the morning piss. Nothing to it. You realize, mid-tinkle, that the bathroom is blue. You even remember painting it that color! Good!! You're really re-connecting to life before vacation now! The opportunity to revel in your success is short-lived however, for even as you feel the dregs of clown tears dribbling from your urethra, you feel it. That persistent, growing pressure. That sweet, unyielding and yet ominous urge... that's right... The turtle's poking his head out.
You know immediately that this is no ordinary anchor-dropping. This is the final rally of the vacation. This carnal tube of impacted evil represents your last moments of bliss and freedom. Smell that? Unmistakeably airport peanuts and ersatz "cinnamon" cookies. And that burning? Surely it's the unrequited swan-song of the special salsa that you used on your salmon at the wedding reception. What's this? Ooohh! Yikes! Roughage. Now what... ahh. Yes, of course. The "Vegan sloppy-joe." Sweet memories.
It isn't long before you sigh in relief and maybe a little regret (why did I drink so many Mango Madness Mimosas at the wedding?), and give one last high-pressure zap of pee onto Mount Movement. You wipe, maybe even spitting on the tissue a little for good measure, and stand. It is done. It is with respect you flush this, the last vestige of vacation. You limp away, somehow better for it. And at least three fucking pounds lighter.

So my trip to Oregon is over, but that doesn't mean that the memories have faded! Burning ass-hole aside, I have some great reminders of all the fun that was to be had. And some of the shit that I will literally spend the rest of my natural life trying to forget.


I present at this time, an Oregon panoply.

Scene #1: Honey... I'm late.

Unfortunately, this does not refer to an unwanted pregnancy. This refers to the incident of my fine self, Significant Other in tow, arriving at the airport after the divine forces that give the ticket-jockeys at United Airlines their innate sense of superiority and power, decided to close boarding for our plane at some arbitrary time at least 20 minutes before the plane was scheduled to leave. This was especially innervating with memories of the momentous occasion of the Missed Flight of January 2010 still giving me nightmares. Naturally, within seconds of being informed our "gate was closed," I reacted in the most mature, responsible way I could. I balled my hands into fists and started screaming at the top of my lungs "I HATE THIS I REALLY REALLY HATE THIS WHY DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW MUCH I HATE THIS??!!"
Sig.Oth.: "It's okay."
Me:"NO IT'S NOT OKAY!!! HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT?! DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND I'D RATHER BE DEAD THAN MISS A PLANE?!"
Sig.Oth.:"..."

In my defense, the last time we missed a plane, I ended up living some kind of David Lynch dream-sequence alternate reality, where I spent hours sitting numbly staring into space and my dad (who voluntarily avoids eye-contact with me.)showed up in an electric-blue compact car to drop me and the Sig.Oth. off at his parent's house.I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew that I didn't want THAT.
Epilogue: We got on the next flight, and my dad didn't show up even once.

Scene #2: Whore-baths aren't just for hookers and camping trips!

The Atlanta airport could have been made entirely out of cat food, and I would have been happy to see it, so relieved was I to be on-track with the travel plans after the Missed Flight of June 2010 still pretty damn fresh in my mind. And it was a charming place, full of ominous warnings regarding our nation's security and jazzy, 1980's style signs that said stuff like "You're in GEORGIA!" and "It's Hot in Hot-lanta!" They all had the same psuedo-spray paint script in a rainbow of violent colors. The only place this shit would have looked natural is spread across the front of Richard Simmons' cut-off tank top.
Anyway, I am an opportunistic urinater, so the liberation from plane #1 meant a chance to go #1 before the final leg of our trip that day. The Sig.Oth., reading my mind and anticipating my needs offered to babysit my suitcase while I took a leak. The pissing went just fine, especially considering the amount of coffee I'd managed to drink on the first plane. The trouble began, as it so often does, when I left the stall. There, before the trough of sinks and mirrors, stood a black woman in full-church garb, with her skirt bunched under her armpits, a crumpled and sweaty handful of wet paper towels in her hand, washing her cooter. The sink was at the ready, somehow running continuously even though they are designed by NASA and Communist sympathizers to not dispense more than two single drops of water at a time, and only then if you know the correct pass-code. She had a face like a cartoon dog, and the kind of strong, gnarled hands that one easily imagines wrapped around the neck of an enemy or making sweet-grass baskets. Her hat and dress were dark navy blue. There she stood, legs akimbo, knees bent, black and blue all over like a giant, cooter-washing anthropomorphic bruise. It was incredible. She hummed as she wiped, which was both soothing and extremely disturbing. I didn't recognize the song, but I like to think that it was "Onward Christian Soldiers" or the theme to "The Black Hole."

Next: More "Scenes from Portland!" And these will actually be from Portland!