The shower-monkey prophecies.

As many of you may recall, a suction-cup-bearing rubbery Chinese monkey holds court in my shower, blankly gazing with his beady eyes at a sight most of you (fortunately) shall not behold: my rank, naked carcass. Morning after morning, I, in the darkness of a pre-dawn “wake me the eff up” wash-up, find myself arranging his limbs in unusual, and, might I add, anatomically improbable, positions for my own amusement.

This morning came like any other. My alarm went off and I turned it off (Sheryl Crow’s “Steve McQueen”) and I laid in my bed like a dead thing for about ten minutes before I loped into the darkened bathroom for my shower. In the semidarkness I groped for my shampoo and my body-wash and mechanically cleansed myself into presentability, and, just as I was about to turn those warm, life-giving jets of heated water off, a small voice hissed softly from the vicinity of my left nipple.

“Hey, you. You over there. Come… a little closer.”

I paused and tried to recall the Five Warning Signs of strokes. I was reaching for the handle to turn the water off when it spoke again.

“Hey. Don’t turn that off. I don’t want the other one to hear us talking. I’m down here. The rubber monkey.”

I evacuated my bladder onto myself and toyed with the idea of letting my bowels go, too. After an eternity of silence, I spoke to the rubber shower monkey, which clearly is a sign of stark insanity.

“What do you wish of me, o rubbery Chinese-made shower monkey?”

A pause.

“Today you’ll have a nosebleed.”

Silence.

“How do you know that, o rubbery Chinese-made shower monkey?”

He never spoke again, and I, hoping against hope that I’d imagined the whole thing, went on with my day. The forty mile drive to Bloomington, the elevator ride to the belfry of Franklin Hall, waving mutely at the ‘borgs shuffling off to their servitude in Eethray-Entay, the naked horror beholding my awaiting workload. My nose began to run a little from the sinus medication I’d taken and I got a tissue to expel the offending gunk. I looked down at the tissue, as I always do (I have to see if there are some real gems in there) and the tissue was covered in my own crimson gore. As my lifeblood formed a 98 degree rivulet down my beard, I thought to the Chinese-made rubbery shower monkey and wondered if his latent clairvoyant powers could be harnessed for ‘good’ – I would love to prove to the Lord that winning a spectacularly ass-filling lottery wouldn’t turn me into a blow-addicted penthouse-living monstrosity. Mostly, though, I began to wonder if I had suddenly become a hemophiliac, because damn.

***

I would like to take a moment to now pause and reflect on the loss of my cat, Balthazar’s, testes. Friday before last I dragged him, howling and spitting like a crack-whore, to Bloomington’s spay and neuter clinic, wherein he was unceremoniously castrated, inoculated and provided with flea-poison. Our fervent hope was this: once Balthazar was sterilized and kitty testosterone wasn’t coursing through his body by the gallon, he’d stop being a nasty little mothertouching douchebag. Oh, of course he’s still precious, and yes, I love him dearly, but having your hand rendered into something resembling ground chuck held together by sinew isn’t high on my “yay, let’s do it!” list. I tell people about how one moment he’s cuddly and sweet and loving on you and the next he’s digesting one of your fingers and they sigh.

“He’s just a baby”, they say. “Kittens do that.”

I want to show these people my eight-pound, seven-month-old “kitten” drinking my rapidly congealing blood after he’s managed to slash my arm down to the pearly-white bone. I want them to watch him as he tries to hide so that he is better able to leap on your exposed leg, torn shreds of which he will carry to his lair to prepare some cracked black pepper jerky. And that poor UPS guy – watching my cat burst forth from his abdomen like one of those critters in “Alien” with one of his kidneys in his maw gave me at least six gray hairs. I just pray that Balthazar at least had the decency to dispatch him humanely. That’ll teach people to send overnight mail to my house for “Tanya McRimmerman.”

Balthazar has his moments, though. Two afternoons ago, a curious Balthazar entered the shower as I was bathing and began to weave between my legs. Since he was already pretty wet and since he’d not had a bath since his special trip to get the snip-snip – which was followed by five days in a kennel while I was in Pennsylvania – I decided I’d do something seemingly foolhardy considering a) Balthazar’s track record and b) the fact that I was completely butt-naked. I picked him up and nestled him in the crook of my arm and moved the water over him, and worked some of my shampoo into his coat, and rinsed – and repeated.

He purred in ecstasy the whole damn time.

Three words come to mind.

What. The. @&$#.

I’ve never had a cat that loved, absolutely loved, water. I have no doubt that he’d swim if he got a chance. I mean, in something other than other creature’s slaughtered offal.

***

It’s amazing – the other day I converted my ‘blog into a Word document. It was FOUR HUNDRED THIRTEEN PAGES. Apparently, I am a novelist and didn’t even realize it.

So enjoy. Send the link to a friend. Pop the top off that fo’ty in your fridge and suck the rank foam off the top and light up that pineapple flavored White Owl cigarillo and reflect on how normal your lives and psyches are. After all, I am here to serve.

Until Friday, I remain,

Dom

A postcard from the edge.

I spent my Thanskgiving not in Kansas, as I'd anticipated, but 11 hours in the opposite direction - Reedsville, Pennsylvania - attending a memorial service for my beloved grandfather, who passed away.

There's not really all that much to say about that.

I will be back tomorrow, my poppets, and thrice a week thereafter.

Until then, I remain,

Domonic

Room Eethray-Entay.

The third floor (belfry?) of Franklin Hall is home to the Office of International Services, the Office of Overseas Study and, naturally,

A writhing nest of otherworldly cyborgs.

I'm not entirely certain how this came to pass. Indiana University's commitment to honor and serve anyone regardless of age, ethnic background, faith or affiliation is a beacon of hope to the Hoosier State as well as the world outside it. This sweeping open-door policy, naturally extended to staff as well as students, seemingly embraces those who, technically, are not human. Perhaps I should explain myself before friendly people with labcoats are dispatched to my devastatingly attractive office to bear me away to an undisclosed locale, having first fired a tranquilizer into my buttock - Dom doesn't go without a fight.

A Compelling, Yet Mildly Sordid Story

Room Eethray Entay is an extension of the Office of Student Financial Aid. Ensconsed in this extension room, android drones labor in semidarkness to work through the subtle, myriad complexities of awarding money to pitiful, broken hominids like myself with the full knowledge that there shall never, in ten thousand year's worth of dreaming, be a shot in hell that anyone will be able to utterly free themselves from the fetters of FAFSA indebtedness. Chortling mirthlessly, they amuse themselves with calculations of how many indecent acts performed behind truck-stop Dumpsters, in shadowy, urine-reeking alleys, and under graffiti-scrawled railroad trestles it would take to make a monthly payment that wouldn't doom one to eternal wretchedness.

Male Borg: Shouldwecalculatealsothetimeandresourcesspentrecouperatingfromthe
CarpalTunnelsurgery?
Other Male Borg: Alsoshouldwecountthepenicillinprescriptionandtheinjectionreleasing
thelockjaw?
Female Borg: Howabouthereconstructiveundercarriagesurgery?

*in unison* Ha.Ha.Ha.Ha.Ha.

A rash of recent child disappearances in Bloomington is under intense investigation, yet those who seek answers have but to paw through the tiny underdesk wastebins in their unholy lair; within, one may "happen upon" tiny skulls gnawed clear to the bone, soiled clown costumes and Happy Meal detritus - the borg's favored bait. A recently placed combination lock on the room's door was pathetic attempt to refuse entry to those with a pulse; because the borgs cannot reason, they ended up propping the door open with a slat of wood anyway.

The Borg Hierarchy

As with any other society, the borgs have created a hierarchy and "pecking order" that allows them to be more functional within the framework of their tiny, insensately evil fiefdom across the hall. To this end, they can easily be divided into drone, snarfblatt and queen, in the order of their societal clout.

Drones: The drones have a lifespan of about ten years or completion of the 25,000th loan application, whichever is sooner. Dressed awkwardly in ill-fitting and often mismatched outfits, the drones frequently disappear sooner than their destined time on this earth due to the voracious appetite of the queen borg. These borgs are nearly always female.

Snarfblatts: Exclusively male, the snarfblatt's only purpose - other than process financial aid applications - is to provide the queen borg with the 'support' necessary to continue a borg lineage. There are never more than three snarfblatts at any given time. Currently, the three snarfblatts are Kırmızı, Kamil and Güney, names which I have given them secretly to allow my coworkers and I to easily communicate regarding their nefarious activities.

Queen: The queen is seen infrequently due to her need to remain in the dark warmth of her lair. Nicknamed Sarışın, she dines exclusively on children and unnecessary borgs. She enjoys counted cross-stitch and watching Robert Redford movies and has always wanted to visit Venice.

****

The truth of the matter is that the inhabitants of Eethray-Entay probably aren't vile non-humans who feast on living flesh, but it sure is more amusing than the alternative reality: that the people in Eethray-Entay just don't interact with us at all. This is surprising considering the office climate at IU in general and more suprising still considering we work mere yards away from each other and share our disgusting bathrooms. You'd imagine that bonding would occur regarding the amusingly fetid stench emanating from our airless johns, over the rattling, ancient waterfountain, or on our ways to and fro in our daily franticness. I've worked here for two years and I've spoken to one of them maybe five times despite my attempts otherwise.

You know what I think?

[Well, it's probably for the best that you don't know what goes on in here]

I think that they feel they're too good to talk to me.

Oh yes.

I won't beg to be greeted. I won't plead to have a door held open for me even though I am a foot away when you slam it in my face. I won't wonder why, when I speak to you, you stare at me like I've just raped a kitten in front of you. Remember this, though:

Nobody, I mean nobody, disses Domonic and lives to tell about it.

So, what's it going to be? Say hello, or repose in a shallow grave?

That's right, bitches.

Until Friday, I remain,

Domonic

Alas! The onion you are eating is someone else’s water-lily.

- cryptic fortune-cookie “fortune” procured by Alert Life in the Corn Devotee Brooke


Nooderr Town: Culture's Last Frontier.

From the outside –let’s face it, ladies and germs – Noodle Town looks like one of those places where the owner/cook/waiter absently swats gravid, pulsing roaches the size of Twinkies into the lo mein, which already is replete with his eye crust (‘sreepies’) and ashes from the Parliament he’s trying to keep from the sweat rolling off his little Asian forehead. In the case of Noodle Town, it’s simply not true: I have it on good authority that those are june-bugs, not roaches.

Imagine if you will the breakroom at a skeezy, oh, I dunno, rubber Halloween mask factory. Subtract the vending machines and the soulless undead factory haints and put a bunch of tables and chairs in it with a barely obscured kitchen, and voila – Noodle Town. Not much to look at, but the food - sweet Jesus, I’d throw a bleach-soaked lawn-dart into a schoolyard at recess for their Shrimp and Broccoli. To get food that good, you can imagine that the people who work at Noodle Town are a little less than up-to-speed on a few things, like, oh, the Engrish. Considering that about half of the people I deal with on a daily basis are in the same boat – pardon the pun – that aspect of the Noodle Town experience doesn’t matter to me in the least. As long as they serve that junk up hot, fast and with as much flavor as they always do, I wouldn’t care if they were back there worshipping the devil in Esperanto. Well, unless the process would involve the devotees having to be, at any point, nude. Go to Noodle Town sometime and you will see why this would be concerning to someone who’s eaten there 3.4 billion times.

Anyway, so there I am, hunkering down and getting ready to open my maw to receive a chopstick-heap of chicken and garlic sauce when I notice a small flurry of activity near the front of the establishment where one establishes whether or not one is a “dine in” customer or not and where you pay (cash or check only, please). A woman with far too much eye-makeup is speaking to one of the cooks. By “speaking” I mean “painfully enunciating every syllable like the cook is five and retarded.” Their conversation goes something like this:

Eye-shadowed Brine Hag: So. Did. You. Have. Time. To. Read. The. Book. I. Gave. You. Question Mark.
Bewildered Asian Man: Huuh?
ESBH: The. Bible. I. Gave. You. Question Mark.

At this point, both Keith and I stop nourishing ourselves to watch in mute horror. Not only is she a complete ass, but she dearly loves the Lord and Savior – which would ordinarily be fine, but I’m sure our protagonist had other, more pressing matters to attend, like steaming a duck carcass or something. He’s looking uncomfortable – thinking about how he should have lowered a dear piece of his anatomy into her fried rice, I have no doubt – and yet she presses on, unaware or uncaring that Mr. Asian Cook-Dude is trying to give her clarion signals in the world’s truest and most utilized language: body language.

ESBH: Do. You. Want. To. Come. To. Bible. Study. Question Mark.

At this point, I become concerned that I will have to wait for this woman in the parking lot and take her sweet life in her 1989 Mazda. An American would have been able to deftly maneuver out of the situation by saying that, no, Sundays are for washing one’s hair, or no, I am not religious and not interested, or no, I worship Sobek the crocodile-god with songbird and stray dog sacrifice and have no need for your weird bleeding Jesus-man. Or, at the very least, an extension of that all-important digit, perhaps emphatically thrust out and upward. But our protagonist was losing face, and quickly. Heaven only knows what happened to that Bible; the Chinese do so enjoy rolling their own cigarettes.

ESBH: When. Do. You. Get. Off. Work. Question Mark.
BAM: Uh, never. I am chained to this wok and if I leave I shall suffer death by ten thousand slices. It is part and parcel of my indentured servitude.
ESBH: What. Is. Your. Phone. Number. Question Mark.

She took it down dutifully in a Hello Kitty scratchpad, and if there is justice in the world he gave her, at the very least, a non-functional number. At most, perhaps he gave her the number to an all-day, all-night opium/enema den – but then she’d have more work to do.
She left, and the final straw of the entire experience was her folding her hands and bowing with her eyes slanted and closed, like small children do when mocking the Asian. I could almost hear her: “Ahhh, so! You rike-ah some flied lice?”

As I washed her slaughtered human effluvia out of my trunk, I wondered why I cared so much. Was it my training in anthropology, a field which has seen its share of heartache concerning missionaries and proselytizing? Was it because of my Catholic education, replete as it was with “penance” and “confession”? Or was it her big, poofy bangs and floor-length denim skirt? I, and she, will never know – she, because she’s *ahem* no longer with us, and I, because even as we speak am seeing something shiny and distracting.

Until Wednesday, I remain,

Domonic

Louisville'e.

This here 'blog comes courtesy of the Hyatt Regency Louisville, in which I have become ensconsed for the Region VI NAFSA conference. I can't linger long for three good reasons:

1) Two people with torches and and one with a ballpeen hammer are waiting "patiently" to also check their pathetic email.

2) The conference itself begins soon; such delightful topics as "Why do students never read their email? Why why whywhywhy?" will be taken to docket.

3) My dinner from last night is waiting, also "patiently", for release.

Until Wednesday, I remain,

Domonic

Et tu, beastae?

Several conspiratory events have prevented me from extruding a 'blog as of late. The gag order I've been forced to sign prevents me from divulging many details. What I can tell you is this: I am not going to worry a lick about contracting avian influenza, my mouth tastes like opium smoke, and, if I focus my left eye hard enough, I can count carpet fibers from more than three yards away.

For the desperate soul who dared launch the dead carp with the emu feather lashed to it through my front-room window in retaliation for my ‘blog ineptitude as of late, I assure you that I shall once again adhere as faithfully as my life allows to my thrice-weekly ‘blogging exercises. Plus, said daring soul will have the distinct pleasure of being hunted down and ruthlessly executed by yours truly in a ritual involving froot-flavored gelatin powder, the DVD of Mary Kate and Ashley’s almost-direct-to-video movie “New York Minute”, and a scythe.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the Greenwood boy-lair which, while delightful in many ways, has been a struggle to deal with from the moment our lease was signed. Early on, questions like “Why does the house smell like cat pee when it rains?” – before the arrival of the Antichrist-cat, of course – and “Should there be a barely-erased chalk outline on our living-room floor?” and “Why is there a portion of our garage where the cement’s been torn up – and are those chicken bones in there?” were answered more or less satisfactorily. As we examined the blood-splatter pattern on our living-room draw-shades and tried to determine how the victim was dispatched and with what blunt instrument, we also began to notice that it was as dank as a poorly maintained New Orleans mausoleum in our home. A humidity gauge confirmed our worst fears: two more humidity points and we might as well have been lying in a drainage ditch in April in Haiti. The dehumidifier we purchased was a godsend, but it, too, came with a cost. With warm, dry air being blown through our house at all hours every day, it became abundantly apparent that our housekeeping skills are not quite as honed as they ought to be. Specifically, the wind whips up enormous dog/human/cat hair tumbleweeds the size of kaiser rolls. Whilst bewildered and vaguely disgruntled one morning following my abrupt call to consciousness, I made my way to my bathroom in the dim of pre-dawn and stopped, frozen with dread, as what eventually proved to be a hairball the size of a chinchilla rolled merrily towards me. I, half naked and vulnerable, would have most likely screamed like a seven-year-old girl had it been what I’d initially assessed it to be – the one thing I truly fear.

Yes. A silverfish.

Silverfish lore is not far removed from silverfish truth. Alert Life in the Corn devotee Elizabeth recalls of her dormitory at a small women’s college in Upstate New York that “silverfish the size of largish mice” stalked the land, causing many a young woman to leap up upon the nearest stationary object and demand shrilly that the beast be destroyed posthaste. Merely stomping on the monstrosity (with sturdy shoes, mind) was not enough; those mutated denizens of hell had to be thoroughly ground into the floor “until you heard the little ‘crchhh’ sound of their exoskeleton busting”, lest you lift your foot and see that the horror was still alive. Silverfish, because of their ability to become almost paper-thin, can easily escape the stomp test and must be (if at all possible) destroyed with government-issue napalm.

Why, then, my fear and loathing of silverfish? First off, unlike other prehistoric relics (the cycad, the coelacanth, Joan Rivers) that may be attractive, interesting, cuddly, or, well, nowhere near my physical locale at any given point, the silverfish could be in your home as we speak. It presses itself paper-thin and hangs in your closet behind that hideous Hawaiian dress shirt a relative bought for you – and which you shall wear only once, to that relative’s funeral – listening to you. Watching you. Shedding grayish scales into the room, filling your very pink insides with its vileness. Hanging over your head at night, on your ceiling, dropping eggs into your open mouth one by one. Scuttling across your face, wraithlike, filling your dreams with palpable dread.

I hope it gives you pause. And, once you realize what you are up against, I recommend one of those “fog in a can” treatments which, while potentially poisoning you and your loved ones and pets, snuff our dusty little friends with profound prejudice. Later, in the darkest part of night, a merry fire could be constructed to carry them to their maker, the Hooved One himself.

A recent decoration phenomenon has me concerned for the very fate of humanity. Imagine, if you will, my 40 minute commute from Greenwood to the Republic. There you are, driving at 65 miles an hour, Peter Gabriel crooning sweetly to you in stereo, thinking about that rash you discovered in the shower, and a “Git-r-Done” festooned pickup truck maneuvers beside you. The gentleman in the driver’s seat has a rough-cut Van Dyck goatee and is wearing a Budweiser ballcap sideways. He’s ravenously sucking down a Marlboro red and a Mountain Dew, and the 290-decible country music is producing visible waves of sound that fairly shimmer forth from the vehicle. As he pulls in front of you, motion from the tailgate region of the vehicle catches your attention. You look once, look away absently, realize what you just saw, and look again.

It’s Sandra Day-O’Connor waving giddily at you, her soon-to-be-retired robes flapping in the early November wind.

No, it’s a set of rubbery testicles dangling from the trailer hitch, anatomically correct to the point that the left, and slightly larger, nut is hanging ever-so-subtly lower than the right. Some even include realistic veins. As the truck hits potholes, the testicles wobble and swing to and fro, causing people like me to envision how uncomfortable that would be in general. Many of the manufacturers, in apparent response to my own discomfort with the swaying, have produced metal faux testicles, which – according to the ad – “no big-ass truck should be without.”

So very many questions arise from this.

1) Are the testicles a commentary, nay, a gendering of an inanimate object? If so, why are ships “female” and pickup trucks “male?” And, if we are assigning gender to things, what the hell is Phyllis Diller?

2) Are the testicles a commentary on the virility of the occupant? If so, can I casually mention that I envision that each of those men’s endowments resemble in size and shape the button mushrooms frequently found in Asian cuisine?

3) Will other rubbery/metallic nether-organs soon be gracing vehicles? What might happen if, say, a seventy-year-old minister drives off the road at the sight of a fleshtoned, four-foot object resembling a dildo flailing about on the undercarriage of a Ford F-150? And, will you be able to get them in circumcised and uncircumcised varieties?

4) Is it justifiable, given my extensive Judeo-Christian upbringing, to find the man responsible for said blight – no doubt living in comfort in the finest doublewide money can buy – and level a pointy finger of reckoning that will shudder him? Or should I just pray to the gods of hops and barley that every Natural Light beer he opens from here to eternity is skunked? Perhaps a fervent hope that he becomes unable to facilitate lovemaking with his sweatpants-wearing she-hag?


Halloween this year found me a) in Ohio and b) dressed up like Poseidon, Greek god of the oceans. Life in the Corn Devotees Anna and Julie had invited Keith and I to Columbus for a Halloween party, and considering that I’d be spending that Saturday night embalming my innards with chocolate otherwise, I assembled a costume for the first time since my sophomore year of high school (Julius Caesar, if you must know). This was a significant challenge considering I sew like Helen Keller. My costume, therefore, was a series of draped cloths and other underthings carefully layered on my body with belts and prayers. It worked, though, as my costume was voted Runner Up for Best Costume at the party. My crowning achievement, though, was that after a carefully tabulated vote my idea for the theme for next year’s party was chosen (this year’s was Pirates and Other Seafaring Adventures).

Next year, all of us will be coming as

Inappropriate Stereotypes.

I can scarcely wait that long.

In my next ‘blog (on Wednesday of next week – sorry, but I will be in Kentucky at a conference), I will discuss how I and Gwyneth think the office across the way from us in Franklin Hall is infested with ‘borgs.

Until then, I remain,

Domonic