The swan song of the corn.

I could provide a colon-load of weary excuses for not having 'blogged for so long, but the armload of methadone is wearing off and I am getting edgy again. No! I simply WON'T go down to the abandoned slaughterhouse to meet "Hank" for some pick-me-up! Shee-it, that bitch has gotten too 'spensive, an' I ain't playin'.

Dawn comes to the Republic not so much "rosy-fingered" but "well, yes - I suppose the sky IS the color of the carcass of a putrid cetacean that has washed ashore only to be picked clean by legions of carrion-beasts." I spent about twenty minutes standing mutely in the shower this morning before I realized I was actually supposed to be doing something in there; it is, after all, extraordinarily difficult to schmear a bagel whilst washing, rinsing and repeating. From the bedroom, Balthazar wailed like he was being drawn and quartered - apparently, he loves his daddy and wants to spend as much time with him as possible. If by "spend as much time" I mean "attempt to suckle upon at every opportunity", then yeah, that's what it was. I have no earthly idea why he's so fixated on nursing upon my ghastly-pale flesh- he wasn't weaned early. If it's a way he's chosen to bond with his daddy or mark me as his own, I can honestly say that I'd prefer he hosed my attractively gorrilla-hairy legs with his white-hot catpiss, because that doesn't make me feel like I am in some sort of deviant porn for fratboys and Japanese businessmen. Nothing reeks of bestiality like having a kitten attempt to savage your nipples through a t-shirt. Wait, I take that back - I guess I don't want to be Golden Shower Cat Daddy, either.

*slow exhale*

Driving from Greenwood (Motto: No, We're Not One of THOSE Pretentious White Suburbs! Hey! Get Off My Lawn Unless That's a Tan!) to the Republic a few mornings ago, I felt slightly akimbo and couldn't quite put a finger on why. Then I realized - hey, you just shat in your own pants. No, actually I'd noticed that something about the landscape had changed and it took me about ten minutes to figure out what was going on because apparently I am a high-functioning 'special needs' person.

The corn is gone.

I don't know when it happened, and honestly, I am glad I didn't see it go. Much as when you go to seafood shanty and mark a certain Maine-reared arthropod for death and feel a surge of intense, Judeo-Christian-inspired guilt, I couldn't have watched the corn get savagely slashed and ground into base feed for cloven-hooved ungulates.

(Aside: When Domonic was in Turkey, he spoke of himself in the third person just like he's doing right now. No, when Domonic was in Turkey, one of his "fondest" memories was of going to a tiny island's only seafood restaurant - located right on the minature harbor - and ordering octopus for his dinner. The garson took a live, very unhappy octopus from a previously hidden tank and scuttled out back, where dull "whack, whack, smack, punch" sounds issued forth, marking the creature's shuffling off this mortal coil. He came back covered in ink and announced that the octopus would now be "tender" and would be ready in about fifteen minutes. Try living with yourself for that one. )

With the corn gone, a piece of me has gone as well. Oh yes. How many nights did I drive home from a long, savage day at work with my windows rolled down, Bruce Hornsby crooning sweetly, with the heady scent of the sighing corn in my face and the sweet, yet vaguely insidious whispering issuing forth from the darkening fields? How many nights did I don a freshly-scrubbed tunic and a crystal-encrusted talisman pouch to walk between the rows, giving thanks with animal sacrifice to Gaea and Demeter for their delicious abundance? What will become of my rapidly expanding corn-husk voudoun-poppet collection? Also: when will the effing Kroger get some of that luscious goodness in stock? Because damn.

Our house is located squarely at a delightful piece of civic engineering called "an utterly unnecessary four-way stop, put onto this earth to be ridiculous and cause Domonic to wish to purchase a harpoon-gun." I'm sure that's not the official name, but it's close. So yes: the four-way stop. Indiana takes orgasm-inducing pleasure from putting four-ways in the most inappropriately busy intersections in the state, thus creating backlogs of traffic as far as the diesel-fume-smog-clouded eye can see. This is because *whispering!* Indiana is too cheap to put lights at important intersections; this would not only make sense, but would reduce the number of people I would have to slaughter every year. The best part of this particular stop is that the traffic rules that should dictate behavior on the road are suspended; suspended, too, is independent thought, as when one comes to a four-way, your share a brain with the other three people. Also suspended: laws of physics. It's a simple thing, my angels: whoever gets there first goes first, and should everyone get there at the same time, whoever waves the most gore-encrusted machete out the window goes first. I have been nearly sheared in half by a man who jumped the four-way in a Suburban as he simultaneously tried to talk on the phone, drink his morning Starbucks and light a smoke; by a special be-mulleted young man with a Confederate flag shaped like the southern states, I was nearly creamed beyond identification as he turned into my lane from the four-way. Last week, a soccer mom gave me the finger for letting her through the intersection first. I drew my lips back to reveal my vulpine incisors and hissed at her, of course. I took special satisfaction from the thought of her returning, exhausted, to her ass-smelling suburbanite hovel to try to balance her checkbook after putting Shrek II in for her filthy dirtbabies for the fifth time that day. Mostly, though, I was pissed about losing the harpoon.

This semester, I'm registered in a once-a-week, two-and-a-half-hour Media Turkish class so that I can "keep up my mad skills" in that crazy-ass Uralo-Altaic language. What I hadn't realized is that:

1) Kemal hocam thinks I know Turkish really, really well. Like, well enough to do well in this class. This is amusing considering how "well" I did during his phone interview with him early this past summer, wherein I all but told him that I was retarded.
2) Everybody in the class has studied Turkish for, like, eight years. One of the women worked at the American Embassy in Ankara for almost four years. They all speak perfect, accented Turkish even when Kemal isn't in the room. They make me want to bite the head off a puppy.

I'm no slouch in the Turkish Mad Skillz department, but c'mon. I am going to me totally raped in this class, and the worst part is that I took this class because, ahem, I invented it. Yes, this class was my idea, given to Kemal last spring. How was I supposed to know he'd carry it to fruition? How was I supposed to know I'd get this job, work 40 hours a week and would want to die really hard when I thought about how I hadn't even cracked a Turkish book all summer?
I am beginning to rue my decision to not tell Kemal that I'd contracted dengue fever while summering in... uh... Papua New Guinea this summer and that I couldn't attend his class.

{Dom: Yes, Kemal, Port Moresby is lovely this time of year, but I haven't been able to hold my bowels since I was probed by that nefarious Aedes aegypti mosquito! Why, yes, I have on dignity pants right at this moment!}

It's a Friday night, and Kirkwood Avenue is erupting into orgiastic celebration. It's not like I'd join, but since I am feeling like I am in my late sixties right about now anyway I think I will sit here in my office and listen to the block party going on down the street and shudder to think of what will be revealed in the harsh light of dawn come tomorrow.

Mindi: I think that asshole stole my diaphragm as a grim souvenir of his conquest! Hey, let's go to the mall!

Todd: What's that red bump on my petie? And why does it burn when I pee?

Amber: Did I really swallow my tongue ring? And why is my bra filled with urchin roe?

Chad: Why do I smell like embalming fluid? And why is that chick lying really still on my bed?


Oh, Chad. If only you knew.



I remain, as ever,

Dom