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