[muffled bleating; sigh of pleasure]

Shortly before leaving Greenwood for a [much deserved] vacationlet in Columbus (OH) this weekend, the "friendly" and "knowledgeable" sales representative from an unnamed megacorporation

*cough INSIGHT DIGITAL hack*

called to inform us about some changes in our plans to have fast, reliable internet connectivity this week.

Dom: Hello, "Sam."
"Sam": aaaaaaahhhh ah AHHHHHHH STOP PEELING OFF MY FINGERNAILS {silence} Hello?
Dom: "Sam"? Are you all right?
"Sam": Oh, I'm just fine. Look, I'm new at *******, and I didn't give you guys the right pricing structure when I came by last night OH MY GOD THAT'S MY SPLEEN
Dom: Well, shit. What should it have been? "Sam"? Are you there?
"Sam": Let me ask you a question: are you a trust-fund baby?
Dom: Well, let's put it this way. I think I will be collecting any inheritance I get from my family and spending it on a new pair of Blue Light Special K-Mart shoes.
"Sam": HAVEN'T YOU BROKEN ALL OF MY TOES YET {silence} I see. Also, remember how I said that I will have the guy come and do the intallation on Monday? Well, that's no longer an option.
Dom: Why not? And who is breaking your toes?
"Sam": Well, the dude will be busy.
Dom: Breaking your toes?
"Sam": Nah, he'll be down at the goat farm. You know. At the goat farm. {silence} OH GOD HE'S GOT A SCYTHE

*dialtone*

Somewhere in the dark of a late winter's chill, "Sam" paid dearly for his mistake. The pitiless part of me wonders not of whether he'll return some night to his squalid bachelor hovel to feed his cat and betta fish but if the internet hooky-uppy guy will let me play with the scythe, because damn. Part of me admires "Sam's" last stand against Internet Hooky-Uppy Man, but the part of me that wanted to be able to write this very 'blog in the "comfort" of my own home can hear the soulless sound of muffled bleating and a nearly inaudible sigh of pleasure carrying on the wind from the goat farm down the road and sides with Internet Hooky-Uppy Man. If it makes you happy, Internet Hooky-Uppy Man, it can't be that bad. If it makes you happ-eeeeee / Then why the hell are you so ... sad?

***

About a year/ year and a half ago, I was rooting like a Vietnamese potbellied-pig in the mail-room drawers in the office for, oh, I dunno, Wite-Out that doesn't blow, and I came across a homemade button with a young woman's face on it. "Find Me", it said, and listed a phone number. Curiosity being one of my many character flaws, I brought the button to Brooke and asked her if she knew anything about the young woman.

Brooke: "Oh, sure. She disappeared and they found her bones in a field."

I immediately began to laugh so hard that I grew concerned that small blood vessels in my face would explode. To my horror, nobody else - a smallish crowd had now gathered - was laughing. Like, at all. Brooke was looking upon me like I'd just started to clean myself up from raping a kitten. Apparently, she'd been an IU coed, and she'd disappeared whilst jogging. After the spring thaw, authorities discovered a gruesome cache of her osteological remains, much to the horror of the IU community.

And there I was. Laughing like a developmentally challenged sex-offender about it.

In my defense - and this is a warning to you all! - if you slip something like "found her bones in a field" or "coyotes scattered his remains" or "there was a wasp's nest in her skull", I will have to laugh. This is because - and I know this comes as a shock - I am fecked up. So take pity on me and impress the gravity of a story upon me before you one-line it on my ass, OK?

Also: whatever happened to the Vietnamese potbellied-pig thing? Where did they all go? Or is that a question that I, who frequents Chinese restaurants, should shelve?

***

After a sound sleep-in (which was greeted, upon my rising, with a fetid lake of decaying dogpiss – my punishment, I suppose, for the pleasure of a lazy weekend), I went last Saturday in the late AM to the Meijer. For those of you unfamiliar with the Meijer (MAI-err), it’s a gigantic, Rhode Island-sized building that contains a supermarket as well as department store amenities and, frequently, small towns that have been engulfed by the encroaching mega-store. This can be the only explanation for the vast numbers of townies walking around in our local Meijer with curlers in their hair and house-robes girding their ghastly white flesh, beating their dirtbabies with what can only be described as domesticized riding-crops while their husbands eye the Skoal display with watery mouths, themselves clad in flannel pajama bottoms, a sweatshirt proclaiming that “These Colors Don’t Run!” and nicotine-yellowed Budweiser baseball cap.

“How is that different than the goddamn Wal*Mart?” you ask, incredulous that I am speaking of two separate entities. “Or, for that matter, K-Mart, which always looks like London after the Blitz?”

Simplicity itself, devoted few: Meijer is open 24 hours a day!

I get out of my car and begin walking towards the massive, Jurassic Park-like gates (behind which an elderly “Greeter” would determine whether or not you needed to get fogged with pepper spray) thinking about why it was I needed to go there in the first place. The gentle late-January breeze carried the briefest wisp of the unspeakable stench emanating forth from under my arms. Ah, yes: deodorant. Just as I was beginning to remember the name of the chemical that makes my underarms break out like I’d been storing white-hot charcoal briquettes under there, a woman in front of me dropped the ridiculous ear-piece to her wireless headset and kept walking. I scuttled over, daintily grasped the still-warm object, and called out to her to stop. She stopped and turned around and there, in front of the Greenwood Meijer, was

Markie Post.

She smiled and tapped over to me. “I lose this all the time!” she squeaked. “Thanks!”
I could say nothing. I was utterly transfixed by the thought of having touched the earpiece to a ridiculous cellphone appendage that had held court in the ear of a minor celebrity. On the tail of that, with Markie disappearing into the maw of the Meijer in front of me, came three rapid-fire thoughts.

One: Eww. I just touched something that was inside the ear of a minor celebrity.
Two: What the hell is Markie Post doing in Greenwood, Indiana?
Three: Hey, wait a minute – isn’t she, like, dead?

For those of you who may not know who the hell I am talking about, Markie Post was the plucky blonde actress who played the attorney “Christine” in the ‘hit’ show “Night Court.” I’d assumed, until I was standing right there in front of her, that she’d died in a trailer park with a coke spoon jammed halfway up her nose. Apparently, I was wrong. We all were.

I tried to follow her inside to see what Markie Post could possibly be buying at the Meijer. You know, can of tuna, Redbook, celery, Summer’s Eve. But, like a Ding Dong at fat-camp, she disappeared without a trace. Had she really been there? Why would she have chosen me to reveal her awful splendor to the world via my readership? Also, why did the Raid I’d huffed before going smell so damn good?

Until later, I remain,

Domonic