Extra Terrestrials and Pre School

My son hates going to preschool. He refuses to get up in the morning, fights his way through breakfast, resists getting dressed and once he arrives, will not let my wife leave without putting on a truly spectacular display of temper. He usually lightens up a bit after an hour or so we’re told, but he doesn’t go without a fight. Today however, he could not wait.

Today is my son’s preschool’s Halloween party and he could not wait to finally put on the Buzz Lightyear costume he has been dying to wear ever since it was purchased in early September. Buzz Lightyear is his hero and my son talks about him almost non-stop. He is always playing with his Buzz action figures and when I come home at night, he calls me Zurg in an attempt to get me to chase him around the house. The anticipation of dressing up like his hero was almost too much for him to bear and on more than one occasion, I’ve caught him sitting in our walk-in closet, just staring at the suit he had to wait until Halloween to wear.

After dinner last night, when we told him he would finally be able to put that coveted costume on, he nearly burst from excitement. He actually woke me up this morning (and I get up at a truly ungodly hour) to ask if it was time to go to school yet. He raced through breakfast, got dressed all by himself and was in the car in his Space Ranger ensemble before my wife could even get the baby in his car seat.

When he got to school though, he started withdrawing back into his shy mode and staying close to my wife so that she would not leave him there again. Then he saw a much younger and shorter toddler waddling into the pre-school dressed like the little three-eyed green aliens that are Buzz Lightyear’s cohorts in the cartoon and Toy Story movies. He got really excited and screamed, “Look Mom! It’s Alien!” He then ran off to play with the little boy in the alien suit without the slightest care about being left behind by my wife.

After being told all this by my wife, I realized just how much like me my son really is. When I was young, I couldn’t stand the thought of going to school either unless I was Buzzed to the point that I saw aliens. After that, I was fine.

It's Sunday

This is the day that I spend the morning making food packed with enough cholesteral to kill 22 oatmeal addicts, break out the beer, come up with some new cheers for the kids to yell at the TV and sit down to watch the Detroit Lions get whipped like an incontinent Shi-tzu on new carpeting.

Now, I'm not a pain freak. I normally don't seek out this level of excruciation unless there's the threat of an orgasm at its conclusion. So why do I do this? Why do I subject myself to such agonizing week after week after week? Why can't I just give up and start watching the Red Wings (besides the fact that I can't get them on my sattelite dish without handing over my first-born)? Why am I unable to resist this weekly football fisting?

Who knows, or at this point, who cares? Anyway, here's the pre-game Limerick:

The Lions can not make them scared,

Any more than get passes well aired,

But those cruel Cleveland clowns,

Will see six shades of Browns,

Up the back of their stained underwhere.

Detroit Lions vs. Cleveland Browns. 1:00pm.

This is gonna hurt.

Post Game Limerick

There were fumbles and penalty calls,
The offense played like ill Barbie dolls,
Though the game was a blur,
I know one thing for sure,
My team sucks a dead wildebeest’s balls.

Detroit 20. Carolina 21.

I'm going to start drinking now.

Lions Game Recap (From My Point of View Anyway)

So anyway, I’m watching the Detroit Lions lose (as usual). As the offense botches things up right before half-time, I threw a can of Chunky Beef and Potato soup on the stove for lunch and then stepped outside for a cigarette because I was just unable to stand the horror any longer. As I was nearly done with it, wondering how things could get any worse, it dawned on me that today is my anniversary. I dropped my cigarette, jumped in the car and rushed off to Meijer to pick up a card and something in the $50 price range. I found a card, and then found a cordless phone. Not thinking the phone was romantic enough, I decided to get some flowers too. As I was on my way to the florist however, I remembered I had soup cooking on the stove. I raced back to the house and found the smoke alarm screaming, the dog completely melting down and my soup reduced to a thick carbon residue that will probably not be able to be removed from the pan.

I then aired out the house, ran to the florist, had a good 90 minutes of foolish hope that the Lions might actually manage to pull a win out of the game (a hope that was savagely crushed after the two minute warning) while getting progressively drunker as I fielded call after call from my wife at work trying to figure out what I got her. Then, as I was halfway through typing this, I remembered the flowers were still wilting in the car. I then raced around the house trying to unsuccessfully find a vase before finally spreading the flowers out among a few beer bottles I had lying around from last night. Now I have to get the house clean before the wife and kids get home so it looks like I’ve actually done something.

Detroit Lions vs. Carolina Panthers

When a panther goes up 'gainst a lion,

Claws be bared and the fur will be flyin',

Who will meet their demise,

Will be naught a surprise,

As which pussy goes home hurt and cryin'.

I've got an empty house, buffalo wings, a six-pack of Labatts, Doritos, jalapeno-cheese dip and an impending sense of doom. This may be too painful to watch.

Detroit Lions vs. Carolina Panthers. 1pm on FOX.

Getting Behind

My apologies to everyone for not keeping up on my comments and, for that matter, posting in general. I am hoping that I can catch up this weekend but I’ve got to attend a Jimmy Buffet-themed funeral memorial on Saturday (65 year old man died of a heart attack while roller blading. Man, I hope that in 30 years I’m still active enough to be a candidate for dying like that) and on Sunday I’m hoping to get some more of the Acid Pulaski introduction written. Even though I deliberately picked the stupidest plot I could think of for a book, I actually really like the way the story outline is starting to shape up. I even came up with a surprise ending that I’m quite proud of actually. I’m sure no one will see it coming and will probably be pissed once they read it. In fact I am so smug about it that if I ever make it that far, I will probably not publish the last chapter of it on the internet to keep the ending from being common knowledge and hurt the book’s publication chances (free copies will go to frequent blog commentors anyway so you don’t feel gypped into buying it if I get lucky enough to get it published).

Anyway, I would like to once again apologize for not being able to respond to comments lately. Like I said before, if you take the time to comment, the least I can do is take the time to answer you. Sorry I’ve gotten behind.

-JEP

When Grannies Attack

I stopped in Kroger (an American grocery store chain) yesterday on my way home from work to pick up a couple of last minute items for last night’s dinner. As I was standing in front of a cooler containing some new salsa flavors I had not seen before, I was hit from behind so hard that I nearly fell face first into the Mexican condiments. After regaining my balance, I spun around with my blood up, expecting to lay a verbal bludgeoning upon an unruly ten-year-old tearing through the store with an unsteerable shopping cart and an infuriating lack of adult supervision. Instead, I found myself face to face with an ancient blue-haired geriatric whose head was cocked hard over and resting upon her right shoulder with the tip of her tongue protruding slightly out of the corner of mouth while a little pool of drool leaked out and ran slowly down her cheek to beneath her chin. She was perched upon one of those electric shopping vehicles for handicapped customers (or those of us who like to occasionally to embark upon a midnight two-mile-per-hour tear through the liquor aisle when no one’s looking) which she had somehow put into reverse after hitting me and was backing away towards the vegetable stands.

I watched in stunned silence as she slithered around and narrowly missed a couple of fellow patrons before backing into large bin of potatoes and tried to figure out how she ended up there. I wondered if she had somehow escaped from her senior shopping group and was desperately trying to make a break for freedom but, lacking the mental capacity she may have had 60 years before, any semblance of hand / eye coordination and possessing no driving ability whatsoever, was succeeding in little more than making a mess of Kroger’s produce section. Then I wondered if she might have been having a stroke or heart attack or something else requiring instant medical attention that had best be administered by someone else since I had forgotten all the emergency first aid I had been taught while in the service and was at the time too entertained by the spectacle to raise an alarm. Then I wondered if this was some kind of fraternity prank where the boys from Delta House liberated some curmudgeonly vegetable from a local mental institution, put her in the driver’s seat of an electric vehicle and unleashed upon a group of Kroger shoppers to see what kind of hilarity would ensue. I looked around to see if there was anyone around resembling the cast of Animal House, because if this was some sort of joke, the perpetrators of it deserved an enthusiastic handshake for comedic brilliance.


As I was looking for the frat brothers, I saw the old lady had put the cart back into drive was now moving forward, heading right for me. It was then that I realized that this lady was not making an escape, having a stroke nor was she the victim of the best prank in the history of the Greek system. This bitch had completely flipped out and the savagely psychotic centegenarian was trying to take me out. I found myself in a position where I was forced to consider actions to defend myself.

Now, I had only been dispatched to the grocery to pick up three items so I did not have much of an arsenal to work with. I had a bag of lettuce, which was utterly worthless in Kroger combat, and a clove of garlic which, unless this blue-haired woman was one of Count Dracula’s macabre minions, was unlikely to be of much help either. There was a can of mushrooms on my list, which could have done double duty as a lethal missile if properly slung out of a plastic produce bag, but I had not gotten that far down on my list yet. I had to look for weaponry that was not contained in my plastic shopping basket. Something close at hand that would stop that charging beast dead in her tracks, or at least knock her off of her present course and into someone other than myself.

I was disheartened to find that I did not have many options close at hand. The salsas I was looking at were of the gourmet variety and packaged in flimsy clear plastic containers instead of the sturdier glass bottles that the mass-produced, cheaper stuff was sold in. Granted, these would undoubtedly be much messier than the stuff in glass jar but they lacked stopping power. They would probably accomplish little more than pissing her off. Across the aisle, closer to the cash registers, was a display showing off some samples of baked goods. The French bread would undoubtedly not have much effect, nor would the apple pie though at least the latter would provide for ample amusement if there were any slapstick fans within eyeshot.

I contemplated taking flight and hiding out in the frozen foods aisle. I also thought about trying to ascend to high ground, perhaps taking a perch up the breakfast shelves and assaulting her with bottles of pancake syrup if she got too close. I even considered dumping over a bin of gumballs or spilling a couple gallons of milk in front of her in the hopes of inducing a spin-out but both items were nowhere in sight. This may seem like an awful lot of things to think about while one is in the process of being run down by a homicidal geriatric, but this whole scenario seemed to play itself out in slow motion, a phenomena that is common in people that find themselves facing injury under the wheels of a vehicle that really doesn’t move all that fast.

In the end though, all I did was wait a couple of minutes until she was almost on top of me and took a couple of small steps to my left to get out of her way, correctly guessing that she did not have the reflexes to steer back into me. She hit the salsa cooler and then backed up until she baked goods display. At that point I caught the attention of a nearby cashier and let her know that we had a mad matron on the loose among the vegetables. The cashier apparently knew the woman as she called her by name before steering her towards a checkout counter with an aisle wide enough to accommodate the handicapped shopping cart and asked her if her daughter was nearby. Apparently the clerks were fooled by her façade of innocence and ignorant of her homicidal tendencies.

I bet that as soon as that old lady was out of eyeshot though, she let out a maniacal laugh, snorted a couple lines of Preparation H, beer-bonged 40 ounces of Metamucil and took her little trolley of terror out to a local playground to try to murder some unwary kindergartners that were oblivious to the predator that stalked them. That hag’s not fooling me a bit though.

My Biggest Fan

So last night I’m installing a ceiling fan in my three-year-old son’s room. As it was dark out, I could not completely cut power to the room as I needed to plug a table lamp in to one of the outlets to see what I was doing. As I’m up on the ladder, with my hands immersed in a bird’s nest of wiring, my son comes in to see what I’m doing. Not satisfied with the light the table lamp is giving off, or just out of force of habit, he hits the light switch. The jolt hit me between my pinkie finger and a point halfway to my elbow and was freakin’ excruciating. My arm did the 115 hertz shuffle, my testicles retreated so far inside they were able to “high-five” my nipples and I fell backwards off the ladder while adding some colorful colloquialisms to my son’s vocabulary. He found this incredibly amusing and while I was curled up on the floor in the fetal position, massaging my savaged arm and hoping to get my natural gender back soon, he was doubled over and turning red in the face, laughing so hard that no sound was coming out.

Now, I love my new house and when I bought I proclaimed that this was the place I wanted to die in. I did not mean that I wanted to do so over the weekend. So before I got back to work, I turned off the wall switch, lectured my son about the dangers of electricity (which he found absolutely hilarious) and figured it was as good a time as any to teach my older daughter how to dial 9-1-1. As soon as I climbed back up the ladder however, the little shit kept faking going for the light switch so that he could bust up over my reaction to it. I finally had to lock the little cretin out of the room so that I at least had a chance of surviving my little home improvement project.

When the fan was finally hung though, I called my son in to show him. After he looked at it turned to me and shouted, “YOU DA MAN, DAD!”

I answered back, “No, you da man!”

“Yeah!” he laughed in return, “I da man wid da fan!”

Between my three-year-old’s willingness to inflict debilitating pain upon others for his own personal amusement and his ability to bust a rhyme on the spot, there is absolutely no way that I can ever even think of denying paternity on that one, though with his penchant for instigating mayhem and chaos everywhere he goes, I may be tempted to in the future for liability reasons.

Acid Pulaski

Up until now, my writing has basically been recollections of personal experiences and frankly, I’ve pretty much run out of material. I’ve been reduced to now facing the reality of having to just make stuff up. In short, I’m going to try my hand at fiction writing.I spent hours trying to come up with a truly original idea, but most everything has pretty much been done. Then this story popped into my head about a polka band who loses a bet and is forced to perform at a retirement home in S&M drag, an appearance so shocking and outrageous that one of the residents drops dead of a heart attack at the show. The resulting publicity launches them into music superstardom as the world’s first punk polka band, Acid Pulaski, where they succumb to excessive debauchery before finally imploding. The cast of characters include:

Sid Pulaski – Acid Pulaski’s frontman. Inveterate alcoholic who ends up as the lone survivor of the band’s success. Story is told through his eyes.

Derek Walesa – Band’s drummer and extremely homophobic womanizer. In his Acid Pulaski persona, he dresses in a Hello Kitty cheerleading outfit with pigtails and becomes a violently reluctant icon of the gay community, usurping SpongeBob Squarepants.

“Tricky Dick” Jagiello – A typical hypochondriac, vice-less, goody-two-shoes, momma’s boy, he discovers his repressed alter-ego within the leather negligee and Richard Nixon mask he takes the stage in and degenerates into a spectacle of pop music excess, drowning in debauched groupie sex and the despair of heroin addiction. As the only person in the band who actually likes polka, Tricky Dick is the musical force behind Acid Pulaski.

“Stalin” Vance Kerchenko – Group mascot. For a man who is 88 years old, Stalin Vance is a physical wonder. He looks every bit his age, thoroughly wrinkled, bald, toothless and liver spotted, but he has the stamina and energy of a thirty year old. Unfortunately, his mind has been thoroughly ravaged by dementia. He is incredibly vulgar, a fanatical arena rock aficionado, in a perpetual state of sexual arousal and, in his position as the mascot of the globe’s hottest pop-music juggernauts, tagging groupies two at a time.

Heather Ruby – As Acid Pulaski’s manager, she manages to escalate the band’s success to unimaginable heights, keep them together long enough to reap the financial rewards of their notoriety and fend off the incessant romantic advances of Stalin Vance.

So, what do you think? I think it’s got Pulitzer written all over it.

Newberry U #5