Smart Ass Cripple

Branded

2013-06-17T14:04:00.003-05:00

I live in constant fear that someday I will lose my pit crew. Those are the people I hire to drag my ass out of bed every day, make my meals, do my laundry, scrub my toilet, wipe my butt, etc. The state pays their wages. And we all know what the legislature giveth the legislature can just as easily taketh away, especially these days when they’re privatizing the everlovin' hell out of everything.

If that ever happens, in order to meet payroll by my own devices, I will probably have no choice but to do something that is against all my moral and political principles. I’ll have to either 1) turn tricks or 2) wear a t-shirt with a corporate product brand on the front.

To me, wearing a Budweiser shirt or McDonald’s boxer shorts makes the following fashion statement: “I’m a chump.” I’m paying a humongous corporation to advertise their product. Pretty good scam they’ve got going on there. If I was the Super Bowl, I could charge them 1.5 skillion bucks to flash their silly little brand for 30 seconds.

But if cripples are left to throw ourselves at the mercy of the Fortune 500 to fund our butt wiping escapades, these shrewd capitalists will seize the opportunity to traffic in the seedy business of human billboards. Cripples like me will be assigned a corporate sugar daddy to pay for our pit crew and in exchange we will have to wear a shirt emblazoned with one of their brands everywhere we go. And we’ll have to hang around whatever strategic locations the corporations send us to reach the target demographic. Like for instance, if you’re wearing a Viagra shirt, you’ll have to hang around golf tournaments.

It might not be so bad, especially if I end up with a brand that makes me look cool, like Jack Daniels or Harley Davidson. It might even turn out to be my dream job. My dream job has always been whatever the easiest job in the world is at the time. Right now it seems like the easiest job in the world is sign holder. But human billboard would surpass that as the easiest job in the world. You don’t even have to exert the effort it takes to hold a sign. You are the sign. It’s the perfect job for cripples. Even the comatose can do it.

But it could also be a nightmare. I don’ think cripples will have any say over which corporation adopts and brands us. So it will be a real crap shoot and I could be sentenced to a life of wearing an embarrassing brand that turns me into a laughingstock, like American Girl or the New York Mets. And there’s no possibility of parole. Branded cripples will be like branded cattle. There’s no turning back.

So maybe I should be proactive and issue what the bureaucrats call an RFP (request for proposal). I’ll auction off the advertising expanse of my chest and see if I can get a corporate bidding war going.

I shouldn’t allow myself to take part in such a degrading practice as becoming a human billboard. I have to salvage at least some of my pride. So I think I’ll just turn tricks.

Street Crimes

2013-06-11T13:06:00.001-05:00

I don’t know if cripples are more susceptible to street crime or not. All I know is I’ve been a victim of a street crime twice. And the second instance was far more traumatizing than the first.

The first might technically be categorized as a zoo crime by those who keep crime statistics. I was at the zoo with my late wife, Anna. We were checking out the Birds of Prey exhibit. I felt someone bump hard against my wheelchair and then a loud voice said, “EXCUUUUUUUUUUSE ME!”

At the time I had a leather tool bag hanging on the side of my chair, the kind people who work with tools hang on their belts. It was a good receptacle for the things I carried around, like pens and writing pads and a comb and gum and stuff like that.

On this day I got careless and tossed a five-dollar bill in there and there it was as plain as day. A male hand reached in and snatched it. Why he felt obliged to politely and loudly excuse himself before stealing from me I don’t know.

The guy took off running. Being that it was only five bucks, I should have just let it go. But when these things happen, you don’t think straight. You feel so insulted and violated.

So I screamed, “STOP HIM! HE TOOK MY MONEY!! And it just so happened there were two nearby guys who must’ve been professional linebackers because they were big and they were fast. They ran after the perpetrator and were closing in fast when he threw down my money, held up his hands to show they were empty, and ran off. One of the linebackers picked up the five, looked at it and then looked at me with a combination of bewilderment, irritation and pity. All that for a lousy five bucks? The way I was screaming like a little girl with her ponytail caught in the car door, you’d think that guy had snatched the Hope Diamond from my tool bag.

The linebacker returned my recovered funds. The end.

The second street crime occurred in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It unfolded in much the same way, except this was more like an assault.

Our hotel doorman warned Anna to hold on tight to her purse since Bourbon Street is infested with pickpockets and snatchers. So Anna stuffed her purse up under her legs and literally sat on it in her wheelchair.

We rolled down Bourbon Street. A man ran toward us through the crowd. We knew we were his target. It all happened so fast, yet it seemed to happen in slow motion. The man reached toward Anna and we were horrified when we saw what he had in his hand! It was a five-dollar bill! He dropped it in Anna’s lap and took off running.

This heinous crime occurs every day somewhere, but it only happens to cripples so nobody keeps statistics on it. You’re sitting minding your own business when somebody suddenly drops a buck or two in your lap or some change in your coffee cup. They strike without warning. And before you can say, “Hey, I’m not a beggar, dammit!” they’re gone. And the pain of your victimization is accentuated by the fact that it’s always such a pissy little amount of money. Like scoring some spare change is supposed to make your day! I’m not saying I’m so pure that I don’t have a price. Maybe if someone dropped three or four grand in my lap, I wouldn’t bitch. I’d swallow my pride for the greater good. But the problem is, no one has ever remotely put me to the test. It’s always a pissy little insulting amount. I’m hoping someone someday will present me with a real moral challenge.

Being that it was only five bucks, I should have just let it go that night on Bourbon Street. But when these things happen, you don’t think straight. You feel so insulted and violated.

So I screamed “STOP HIM! HE GAVE US MONEY!!” But there were no linebackers this time. The perpetrator disappeared into the crowd.

I still haven’t recovered. I know that sicko is probably still out there somewhere, lurking, biding his time, waiting to similarly assault another unsuspecting cripple.

Ask Smart Ass Cripple Volume IV

2013-06-05T13:39:00.002-05:00

The best of the inbox:

Dear SAC,

What was your proudest moment as a cripple?

Warmly,

WPL

Dear W,

My proudest moment as a cripple happened when I was in the office of the dentist who removed all four of my wisdom teeth at once.

The dentist leaned down to lift the armrest of his cushy torture chair so I could park my motorized wheelchair smack up against it and he could help me transfer over. But as I backed my chair into place I heard from behind me a man bellow in pain.

“Ow!! SONUVABIIIIIIITCH!” And then the dentist darted out from behind me, flapping and squeezing his hand and doubling over like he’d smashed his fingers with a hammer.

“Sonuvabitch that hurt!”

It seemed that when I backed in I accidentally mashed his fingers between my tire and his torture chair. Watching him hop around in pain, I realized I was living the fantasy of millions by putting the hurt on the dentist. I felt especially gratified when, as I later left his office, there was no one in the waiting room, not even the receptionist. I pictured a pack of patients hearing “Sonuvabitch that hurt”coming from the torture room and shooting out of there like the place was on fire, even the receptionist.

Never have I felt more powerful!

Dear Smart Ass,

There's something I'm dying to know. How do blind people keep from brushing their teeth with Preparation H? How do they tell one tube from the next? You're the closest thing I know to a blind person so I thought I'd ask you.

Please help.

Sincerely,

Man with Sight

Dear Man with Sight,

Wow, it’s like you can read my mind! I’ve been dying to know the answer to that exact question since I was a wee tot, but always was afraid to ask.

When I ponder this question my mind runs wild with speculation: Maybe guide dogs are trained to help along these lines—one bark for toothpaste, two barks for Preparation H, three barks for rubber cement. I mean, why not? As dogs go, guide dogs are fucking geniuses.

By stepping forward and asking this question, you gave me the courage to finally do the same, since if blind people call me an insensitive ignoramus I can blame it on you. I sent your question to several blind people. I received this response from Mr. Lynn Manning of Los Angeles, California, which I assume is the official reply on behalf of all blind people everywhere.

The esteemed Mr. Manning writes: “If you can't smell the difference between Prep H and toothpaste, you've got more than a problem with your eyes.”

-- Blind Man with Nose

Dear Smart Ass Cripple,

I’m delighted to see that you are now the official site of bitter cripples. At last I feel as if I’ve found a home!

But the problem is, whereas I feel like a bitter cripple and enjoy the camaraderie of bitter cripples, I am not now nor have I ever been crippled.

Can I call myself a bitter cripple? Please say yes!

With admiration,

Bitter Cripple Wannabe

Dear Wannabe,

The term bitter cripple does not refer to a physical condition. It is, rather, an advanced state of consciousness. It is an exquisitely indefinable stage of enlightenment that is attained by freeing one’s self from the tyranny of bull shit.

A bitter cripple, essentially, is a cripple who is pissed off about how cripples are treated. There is no single path to becoming a bitter cripple. I view achieving enlightenment (religious or otherwise) in the same way I view achieving orgasm. Who cares how you get there, just so you get there.

However, to truly understand what it means to be a bitter cripple in all its many dimensions, one must actually be crippled. But the good news is the enlightened uncrippled like you can become honorary bitter cripples. All you have to do is convince an actual bitter cripple to bestow that title upon you.

I must warn you though that even being an honorary bitter cripple is a lot of work. Bitter cripples and our allies are on the frontlines of the ongoing War on Bull Shit. The allure of bull shit is relentless. It’s always trying to win you back, always trying to convince you that you shouldn’t be so upset so much. Bull shit wears many disguises. You must be vigilant.

It's much easier to just give up and be a sweet cripple or, even worse, a bittersweet cripple. Being a bitter cripple is a lifelong commitment. It can really wear you down. I hope in my lifetime the forces of bull shit will be vanquished to the point where I can ease up a little and retire to the status of bitter cripple emeritus.

Life Lessons Learned at SHIT

2013-05-31T18:30:00.001-05:00

I don’t mean to give the impression that I didn’t learn a damn thing during my five years as an adolescent inmate at the state-operated boarding school for cripples, aka the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT). Of course I learned life lessons there that I remember today. Here are two off the top of my head:

Life lesson 1: Not all penises are alike. The only penis I ever saw in person up until I was about age 13 was the one belonging to yours truly. But then this kid in a wheelchair lined up next to me by the urinals in the boys’ room and I couldn’t help but notice there was something terribly wrong with his. It was wrapped in a husk or something. It looked like it was wearing a flesh-colored scuba driver suit. I didn’t know that for a penis to look like mine required surgical intervention. I mean, my family wasn’t Jewish or anything so we didn’t make a big deal about it.

And so I wondered if this kid had been sent away to SHIT for a deeper, darker, unspoken reason. Was this the real freak feature for which he was being banished and the wheelchair was just secondary? It reminded me of how I felt about this kid who rode the special bus with me a few years earlier when I went to the public elementary school for cripples. His name was Fabio (Smart Ass Cripple Alias). He walked with a walker and he looked just like Babe Ruth. He had a turned up nose and pudgy cheeks like Babe Ruth. Whenever the special bus went to Fabio’s house his dad came out to meet him. And dad looked like Babe Ruth, too. And one day Fabio’s baby sister came out with dad and she looked like Babe Ruth, too. And one day Fabio’s mother came out with dad and baby sister and even she looked like Babe Ruth!

Seeing Fabio’s live, animated family portrait jarred me as a young boy because I wondered if this was a real live case of that hillbilly inbreeding stuff adults whispered about in the darkest tones. I always assumed Fabio was sent to the cripple school because he walked with a walker. But now I wondered if his “primary diagnosis” was that his whole family looked like Babe Ruth. But maybe it wasn’t necessarily what everybody automatically assumed. Maybe Fabio’s parents met at a support group for people who get dealt a lot of shit because they look like Babe Ruth and they fell in love and got married. Or something like that.

But anyway, because of the episode in the SHIT boys' room, I soon learned something new about penises and, most importantly, about myself.

Life lesson 2: Don’t pretend you know about something when you don’t, especially when it’s chitlins. One day Miss Etta, one of the houseparents, announced that on Saturday night, she would bring in a batch of chitlins and cook them up as a treat for any inmate who wanted some. She asked for a show of hands so she’d know how much chitlins to cook. All the cool kids waved their hands. So I waved my hand. I just looooooooooooooove them chitlins, I said. Everybody was surprised that a pimply white kid could be so worldly. But really I didn’t know a damn thing about chitlins. I just knew they were some exotic food that cool people ate.

On Saturday night there was a horrid smell coming from the kitchen. It smelled like someone boiling raw sewage. And there was Miss Etta standing over the stove and stirring a pot. She smiled and gave me a big thumbs up. I was seized with regret. What had I gotten myself into with my big show-off mouth?

Miss Etta served up the chitlins. The cool kids gathered around. There was no turning back now. I’d already proudly proclaimed myself a chitlins aficionado. I couldn’t bare the shame of exposing myself as a fraud. And there were no dogs around to slip my chitlins to on the sly. So I ate. I had no choice. And they tasted like they smelled. And I told Miss Etta they were the best I ever had.

A Perfect People Magazine Death

2013-05-26T16:49:00.001-05:00

I hope to hell I’m never terminally ill. I can’t think of anything that would suck worse than that.

I'll be the whiniest, most obnoxious, most bitter and demanding and unlovable terminally ill sonuvabitch that ever lived. By the time it’s all over, I won’t have a single friend left. One of my hospice workers will probably get pissed and strangle me. You won’t see me on the cover of People magazine if I’m terminally ill because in order to make the cover of People magazine you have to die with dignity and grace. Screw that. If death is sadistically unleashing a tidal wave of pain on me, I’m sure as hell not gonna sit there and be gracious about it. Who the hell made that rule up? Probably not somebody who was terminally ill. The only way I’ll die with grace is if there’s a woman dying next to me named Grace. The only way the word noble will be associated with my death is if her name is Grace Noble.

I know I couldn’t be all stoic and strong in the face of death even if I wanted to because I hate pain. I’m such a fucking baby when it comes to pain. I’ll do anything to avoid it. I used to see this grief counselor named Frank. Frank was super cool but he always told me I should “walk into” pain. When he said that, it made me think of the outhouse on my grandma’s farm. I have warm childhood memories of shitting in that outhouse. Grandma had a perfectly fine and functional bathroom in her house but for some reason her husband always went out to shit in the outhouse, even if there was a foot of snow. So when we visited, I really looked forward to going out there with him and shitting like a real man! It was so cool. There was even a girly picture centerfold tacked up on the back of the outhouse door. And it was especially cool to shit in cold weather because the shit steamed.

But I was also afraid of going to the outhouse because I feared I could easily fall down the hole into the bottomless quicksand pit of waste below. The hole was man-sized and I was just a boy. Walking into pain, it seemed to me, would be like willfully jumping down into that hole just for the fullness of the experience. Thanks but no. I ‘m more comfortable executing a purely defensive strategy of avoiding falling down the hole in the first place.

If I was terminally ill, I would probably be insanely jealous of the healthy. Because when I was an inmate at the state-operated boarding school for crippled children, aka the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT), I was jealous of the free. I envied the employees, the visitors, the delivery guys. I envied anyone who could just walk out the front door with no pass, no doctor’s permission, no escort, no questions asked. Consequently, I signed up for any lame-ass field trip opportunity that came along just to get the hell out of there. I must’ve seen “You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown” and “Up With People” on stage 50 damn times, though it was probably just once.

That’s the kind of crazy shit jealousy will drive a person to do. So God knows what I’ll be like if I’m terminally ill. But I know myself well enough to confidently predict that I’ll be a real douche bag. So you should start thinking up polite excuses to avoid me, just in case.

When Cripples Get Arrested

2013-05-20T23:18:00.000-05:00

Some people think I’m a badass because I’ve been arrested a bunch of times for protesting. But I don’t know.

My friend Ed, now he’s a badass. He sometimes introduces himself as Ed of the Chicago 15. That’s because in the 1960s, during the Vietnam War, he and 14 others broke into a draft office in Chicago, seized the draft records, took them out in the alley and burned them. They were arrested and tried. Ed not only spent 18 months in federal prison, but the prison was in northern Minnesota! American Siberia, eh?

Ed is a badass. And he has a bunch of badass friends. I know they’re badasses because they too have a city and number after their names: Pete of the New York 9; Sally of the Chattanooga 12. That means they all did something politically badass, like chain themselves to a nuclear warhead, and stood trial for it.

I don’t have a city and number after my name. When crippled protestors get arrested, it ain’t the same. Just last month I witnessed about 40 crippled protestors get arrested right outside the White House. Now back in the good old days it was easy. Any old mope with a beef and handcuffs could walk right up to the White House gate, lock himself to it and get arrested. No questions asked. But now they’ve erected a “security perimeter” around the White House. There’s a line of yellow DO NOT CROSS police tape stretched from tree to tree across the street and it runs about a half block around in all directions. Cross that line and it’s prison in northern Minnesota for you, pal!

Well these 40 cripples crashed through the tape like runners at the finish line when the cops weren’t looking and they got all the way up to the White House gate and whipped out the handcuffs. At first the cops were furious. They wrestled down all the verts (which is short for verticals, which is slang for people who walk). The cops huddled. How should they handle these disobedient cripples? They broke huddle. An ominous van pulled up. It said Department of Homeland Security on the side. Uh oh! Could this be the infamous Dick Cheney Torture-Mobile? The cops opened the back doors of the van. They took out a folding table and chairs and set them up on the street. They lined the cripples up, wrote them tickets and let them go. Catch and release, like a fishing outing for pacifists.

Now suppose 40 verts brazenly crashed the White House “security perimeter” like that. First they would have been tasered then bound and gagged with duct tape and hauled off to Guantanamo, never to be seen again. But cripples get tickets, like common jay walkers, because tasering cripples don’t look so good. It plays right into their hands. Plus, hauling off 40 cripples is a pain in the ass. Cops can just fling 40 verts into a paddy wagon. But for 40 cripples you need a fleet of school buses with wheelchair lifts. And it takes about 20 hours to transport them all. So the cops say screw it.

So about all I have to show for all my arrests is a bunch of carbon copies of tickets. I suppose that’s a good thing. Spending 18 months in prison in northern Minnesota probably isn’t nearly as glamorous as it sounds.

Untitled or What if I Was Just Another Standard White Kid in the Neighborhood?

2013-05-13T23:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder what terrible tragedies might have befallen me if, by some cruel twist of fate, I wasn’t born crippled.

It gives me a cold chill to think about it. What if I was just another standard white kid in the neighborhood? Somebody might have made me take accordion lessons. The first time it really hit me how lucky I was to be crippled was when I fully comprehended what it means to have to take accordion lessons. Those poor kids always looked so bitter and forlorn. I often wonder what became of them. Whenever a story pops up in the news about an ax murderer, I wonder if it’s one of them.

I felt such pity for those kids because they weren’t nearly as fortunate as I was. When you’re a criplet, nobody makes you take accordion lessons. And that wasn’t the only time I felt like counting my blessings. For the most part, being a criplet got me out of going to church, too. So I didn’t have to live if fear that someone might make me try out to be an altar boy. Have you ever seen an altar boy in a wheelchair? Or a blind altar boy being led around by a guide dog?

And later, in high school and college, I felt the full glory of my cripple privilege. All the uncrippled mopes jumped through hoops and twisted into contortions to avoid being drafted into the military. But because I was crippled I didn’t have to run off to Canada or pretend I was gay. I had an automatic exemption. All I had to do was stay crippled. I was the only guy I knew who wished real hard he would receive a draft notice. I wanted to report to the draft office with my notice and my crippled ass, just for a laugh.

Yep, and being crippled also saved me from the becoming a jock. That’s the kind of crowd I would’ve hung out with. And I would’ve been the kind of jock that looks down hardest on cripples. Actually, I would’ve been worse than a jock. I would’ve been a failed jock, reliving my high school glory days as a second string kick holder and waiting for my big break. I’d be living in a shabby attic, getting stoned, watching tons of daytime television and wondering what God has planned for me. And someday I would come to the realization that living in a shabby attic, getting stoned and watching tons of daytime television IS what God has planned for me.

I try to remember all this when some uncrippled people act like they do sometimes around cripples. When they act all superior or patronizing or freaked out or put upon or jittery or whatever, I try to give them a break. I remind myself that the uncrippled are under a lot of pressure in this world and sometimes my presence makes it worse. They see how easy I’ve had it and they feel jealous.

I understand. So I pat them on the head and move on.

Busted by a Dog

2013-05-09T18:42:00.002-05:00

My friends the Brices, who live in Maryland, let my crew and me spend the night in the guest room in their basement. In the morning, their happy dog bounced in and greeted everyone, tail wagging. He looked like an animated mop. But the dog saw me sitting in my wheelchair and he instantly transformed into a snarling, insane monster. His bark was that shrill yap that makes you jump out of your skin if you don't see it coming, like stepping on a squeak toy in the dark.

It’s a good thing Marian Brice was there to hold the dog back or he might have torn my face off. “He thinks you’re a vacuum cleaner!” she laughed. The vacuum cleaner, she said, is this dog’s self-declared archenemy and nemesis. It brings out the beast in him. He attacks it. She wrestled the furious, snapping hellhound out the room.

But it shook me up good for the whole day. It wasn’t so much that I nearly got mauled to shreds in a case of mistaken identity. It was more the sudden, psychologically humbling effect of being busted by a dog. It again reminded me that no matter how hard you try to rise above it all and play the role of the independent, self-sufficient, overcoming cripple, sooner or later something happens to make it clear that on some inescapable, primal level you’re still a cripple after all. And you always will be.

You can never dodge all the slings and arrows that come with crippledom, unless you hide under your bed. The rich cripples try to buy their crippledness away. They know that the best insulation from the cold realities of being crippled is a thick layer of money. If you can pay cash for your wheelchairs and equipment, you'll never have to flagellate yourself at the feet of a bureaucrat. If you can hire enough goons to carry you around, even the Taj Mahal is accessible. You can go everywhere and do everything just like the uncrippled. You can buy total acceptance. But inevitably, regardless of who you are, you’ll be put in your place. A cab driver will see your wheelchair and blow past you. A passerby will drop change in your lap. A waitress will ask your date what you want to eat. And you suddenly remember where you came from.

I suppose these encounters are good for us in the long run. They keep us from getting too big for our wheelchairs.

That same day the mop dog nearly killed me I went to the FDR memorial in Washington. Now if there ever was a cripple who could totally leave behind his crippledness and every indignity that accompanies it, surely it was him. He had everything the independent, self-sufficient, overcoming cripple needs. Not only was he rich but also he had a loyal, well-paid crew of servants and luxury housing all provided at public expense.

But at the feet of a sculpture of Roosevelt was a sculpture of his beloved Scottie dog, Fala. And so I wondered what happened when Fala first saw Roosevelt in his makeshift wheelchair? Did he bark frantically like some dogs do when they see wheeled vehicles? Did the upstart canine treat the president of the United States like a common vacuum cleaner?

My morning dog showdown reran through my head. But this time the cripple was Roosevelt instead of me and the dog was Fala. The setting was the oval office and restraining the dog, instead of Marian Brice, was a secret service agent. I was mucho amused.

I doubt that this happened but I like to imagine it did. I like to imagine Roosevelt could still relate to cripples like me.

The Latest Research on Crippled Bees

2013-05-03T18:51:00.000-05:00

Wow! More groundbreaking cripple research has come out of the renown Department of Cripple Research at John Hopkin’s University. You may recall, as previously reported exclusively here in Smart Ass Cripple, these same researchers studied the DNA of millions of cripples and proved scientifically that the reason people are crippled is because God is punishing them for something evil they did in a previous life. (See Evil Bastards All, August 19, 2011).

Well for their latest project, these researchers crippled up a bunch of bees by giving them spinal cord injuries. (Bees have spinal cords? Who knew?) And then these crippled bees were put back into their colonies. And the scientists learned from observing the bees that bee society treated the crippled bees in the same way that human society treats their cripples. (Pay attention. You won’t hear about this in the corporate media.)

The crippled bees were outcasts. They couldn’t get jobs and they couldn’t get laid. And that made the crippled bees very depressed. Because bees, like humans, have two main functions: they work and they screw. But the crippled bees were considered by the other bees to be incapable of performing either function.

The bee caste system isn’t so bad if you’re born a drone because your job is to screw the queen and die. But it’s really fucked up if you’re born a worker bee because all you do is bust your ass all day.

Well the queens didn’t want to screw the crippled drones. They just couldn’t bring themselves to do it. The queens said they loved the crippled drones, but not in a sexual way. They loved them more like a brother. And the worker bees shunned the crippled worker bees altogether. They said they had a lot of work to do and they didn’t have time to stop and wait for the crippled worker bees to catch up.

Soon, as you would suspect, the presence of cripples drove the orderly, organized colony into a state of unrest. The worker bees became resentful because they had too much work to do in the first place and now they had to take care of a bunch of cripples on top of it. And the crippled drones were growing more and more ornery because they weren’t getting laid, which meant they had no purpose in life. Who among us can’t relate to that?

But here’s the most amazing thing the researchers observed: The uncrippled bees were so confused about what to make of these crippled bees and where their rightful place in bee society should be, that in an act of sheer desperation they did something truly unbelievable. They organized a telethon! Some uncrippled bees convinced the others that if everybody hustled up enough money all the crippled bees would be cured and then there wouldn’t be any cripples anymore and everything would be neat and orderly like God intended.

Of course, the telethon idea didn’t work. It raised a ton of money but all the crippled bees are still crippled. And the rest of the bees still don’t know what to do with them. For now, all the uncrippled bees are just going about their business, secretly hoping that if they ignore they crippled bees long enough, they’ll all just quietly go away.

Vassar Clements Sure Didn’t Know Much About Cripples

2013-04-29T22:26:00.001-05:00

Vassar Clements was a kick-ass bluegrass fiddle player. He played with such strength and vigor it’s a wonder his fiddle never burst into flames. And he was versatile as all hell. They called him the father of “hillbilly jazz” because his rich brand of bluegrass often crossed way over into the realm of jazz.

But he sure didn’t know much about cripples. I figured this out shortly after I talked to him backstage after one of his concerts. Cripples are big time backstage crashers. The security goons are quick to unhook the velvet barricades when sad looking cripples come by, especially in a big group. My cripple credentials have gotten me backstage to meet, among others, Jim Croce, Marie Osmond (don’t ask) and Itzhak Perlman.

So if you want to get backstage to meet your favorite performer, fake like you’re a cripple. I went with a pack of friends once to see Arlo Guthrie at Ravinia, this outdoor venue where you can picnic in the grass and listen to live music. So some of my friends picked me up out of my wheelchair and put me on a blanket on the grass. And later on, Loretta Martin takes off with my chair. And the concert ends and the security guys are telling me it’s time to go. I tell them someone took off with my wheelchair but they don’t believe me. I guess they think I’m drunk or something. They’re threatening to call the cops. I’m freaking out. Finally, Loretta returns with my chair, triumphant. She says she used it to get backstage to meet Arlo. She got his autograph on a playing card.

I was with my college roommate, Mike Bachstein, when we crashed backstage to meet Vassar. One of us said something brilliant to him like “nice fiddle” to which he replied “thanks.” Vassar said the fiddle was 400 years old. Then he said, “You want to see it?” And he handed the fiddle to Bachstein. Now Bachstein had cerebral palsy so he was all spastic and shit. And the more that spastic people try to be cool under pressure and not spaz out, the more they spaz out. One time Bachstein’s power wheelchair broke down so the repair shop gave him a loaner. Bachstein had enough trouble driving his own chair straight, let alone a strange chair. So he managed to drive this chair to a building for class and inside there was a charity bake sale set up in the hall so nice and pretty. Bachstein said to himself, “Oh shit. I’ve got to concentrate real hard when I drive past that bake sale so I don’t spaz out and crash into it and wipe the whole thing out!” And when Bachstein drove past the bake sale, he spazzed out and crashed into it and wiped the whole thing out.

That day must’ve roared up in a flashback in Bachstein’s brain when Vassar handed him his priceless fiddle, because his face tightened with terror. I thought sure he would have the mother of all spasms right then and there and launch the fiddle into outer space.

But Bachstein quickly passed the fiddle to me like a hot potato. I tensed up! Now I’m not spastic, but I’m also not graceful. When I was a kid, I was merrily splashing through street puddles after a rain with some walkie friends. I pushed my chair into a puddle that turned out to be about two feet deep. I was submerged up to my knees. If it had been power chair, I might have fried! That’s how I developed my first wheelchair rule of the road: never drive through a puddle if you can’t see the bottom.

I thought sure I’d drop the fiddle and make international headlines: FAMOUS FIDDLER STRANGLES CRIPPLE. So I passed the hot-potato fiddle immediately back to Vassar. He accepted it back, all calm and gentlemanly. He never came to realize the sort of bullet he dodged that night. If he knew the first thing about cripples he would have known you should never pass us your heirloom fiddle. Good thing he didn’t find out the hard way.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

2013-04-23T12:39:00.003-05:00

I know your dilemma. I feel your pain. You’re sick to death of always working your ass off, so you want to get an education and better yourself. But you don’t have time to get an education and better yourself because you’re always working your ass off.

That’s why I founded my new online college: the University of the Crapper. It’s especially designed to meet the educational needs of ordinary, everyday, oppressed victim of raw ass capitalism. Because if you’re working your ass off, about the only time you have to yourself is the time you spend on the crapper. And that’s precisely the point. No matter how oppressed you are, there’s one thing THE MAN can never completely take away from you. HE can never completely take away your crapper time. No matter how much it pains HIM, HE has to permit you to periodically take a break to excrete. Otherwise you’ll die and you won’t be able to keep working your ass off.

Even under martial law they have to let you have time to excrete. Therein lies the beauty of God’s creation. That’s the way to beat THE SYSTEM. That’s the one loophole THE MAN can’t close. And so it’s important that we live those precious moments to the fullest. The secret to overcoming oppression is to use that time efficiently. Every trip to the crapper must be a multitasking experience. I think my greatest thoughts during my sacred time on the bowl. I think up a lot of these blog entries on the bowl. (Sorry, dear reader. Now you know how the sausage is made.)

So if you enroll in the U of C, you receive 15-minute lesson plans that enable you to incrementally earn a degree while you sit. You can view them on your laptop or smart phone. And in just 10 short years, you'll have an associate’s degree! And there’s no limit to what you can learn from the comfort and privacy of a bathroom stall. You can even learn how to play a musical instrument, like the French horn! However, I am aware that some of you may have to pursue your studies surreptitiously, while sitting in the stall at work. In that case, you might want to learn how to play a musical instrument that emits sounds that don’t arouse suspicion when coming from a bathroom stall, like the tuba.

Some cynics say virtual universities are inferior to actual universities because they don’t have a football team. But at U of C we do have a football team. They’re called The Plungers. I’m sure you can picture their logo. And The Plungers can be the greatest football team of all time if that’s what you want them to be. They can be whatever you want them to be, since they’re strictly a product of your imagination. That’s the thrill of virtual football.

U of C is an equal opportunity institution of higher education. We discriminate against no one. If you have tuition money, we’ll take it.

When you receive your virtual degree from U of C, you’ll be able to land a high-paying and prestigious job, virtually. Your degree will be suitable for framing. And don’t let anyone tell you that it’s worthless. You can always use it to wipe.

Insults

2013-04-18T16:24:00.002-05:00

There’s this homeless guy who’s always outside my building. His presence disturbs me. Whenever I pass him he insults me.

He hangs around outside the 7-Eleven, sitting on an upside-down plastic milk crate. There’s no cushion. His butt must look like a waffle. He has a patchy beard, random tufts of white hair sprouting from his face. And when people come out of the 7-Eleven he says,”Spare change?” But he never says that to me. When I pass he just says, “Hey, how you doin'?” or “What’s up, big guy?”

Isn’t that insulting? What’s wrong with my spare change? I mean, I wouldn’t give it to him anyway. I keep my money in a bag attached to the side of my wheelchair. I can’t reach the bag so when I make a transaction the other party takes the cash out for me. So giving money to the homeless on the streets is too labor intensive and time consuming. But that’s not the point. Why doesn’t the guy perched on the milk crate not even give me the opportunity to turn him down? Does he not want to stoop so low as to ask a cripple for money? That’s not fair. When I pass a homeless person, I’m the one who’s supposed to feel a satisfying rush of condescending good fortune.

There’s another homeless guy outside the Starbucks across the street. He sells this weekly newspaper called Streetwise that homeless people around here sell to make a few bucks. At least this guy tries to get me to buy his paper. So I often oblige. But he still insults me. When he extracts the cash from my bag, he makes it a point to show me he’s taking only what he’s owed and nothing more. He does this, he told me once, because “God will never forgive me if I steal from the handicapped.”

What the fuck! It takes all the joy out of charitable giving when you can’t even feel superior!

But I’ll tell you who insulted me most of all. It was the guy at the disco. Some people believe God makes people crippled to keep them from doing something bad in life. The one time I started to believe that theory might be true was the one time I went to a disco. Because if I hadn’t been crippled I would have punched the guy at the disco in the head. But then again, if I hadn’t been crippled, he wouldn’t have insulted me so I would have had no rationale for punching him in the head.

But anyway, I went with some other cripples to a disco. Don’t ask me why. We must’ve been delirious with cabin fever. Jim Liptak was our token vert (which is short for vertical, which is slang for people who can walk). So the guy at the disco sees us when we enter and immediately plays that insulting game called Address the Vert. He spoke only to Liptak, as if he was our translator. “Bring your friends over here,” he said. “If your friends want something to drink, tell the server.” He kept playing Address the Vert and just when I was ready to punch him in the head, he said something that acknowledged my humanity and restored my sense of equality. He said to Liptak, “Ask your friends if they want to go in the office and do some cocaine.”

We all said no thanks, but often I regret it. It would have been interesting to follow him to the office and see how long he stuck with the Address the Vert bit. “Tell your friends it’s top shelf stuff from the Caribbean.” Or maybe he would’ve gotten high with us and said something to Liptak like, “Ask your friends if they ever wondered what it's like to live on Saturn and see 60 moons in the sky.”

But at least he recognized us cripples as human beings who might want to wrench up our brains with coke, like the other people at the disco. I didn’t want to punch him in the head anymore.

A Hot Stock Tip From Smart Ass Cripple

2013-04-11T23:11:00.000-05:00

As a public service from Smart Ass Cripple, here’s a hot stock tip, based on inside information:

Figure out whoever it is that manufactures duct tape and buy a shitload of stock in that company.

I don’t know squat about the stock market but I know lots of squat about duct tape. I can’t help it. I’m crippled. And cripples know everything there is to know about duct tape.

I looked up the history of duct tape on the internet, which is never wrong, and it seems it was first manufactured for military use during World War II and became commercially available shortly thereafter. That sounds about right because that’s about the time cripples began to emerge from the various dark holes to which we were relegated. And I’m sure duct tape had a lot to do with it.

Because the way I size up cripples is by seeing how much duct tape they have on their wheelchairs. If you want to know if a cripple is faking it, that’s how you tell. If they have no duct tape then they ain’t authentic cripples. Don’t trust them. They’re probably trying to scam Social Security or something.

Because the first thing every cripple does when their wheelchair breaks is reach for the duct tape. And then you pray to merciful God that whatever it is that broke, wrapping it in duct tape will fix it. Because otherwise you’ll have to figure out how to raise a zillion dollars to pay for the parts and labor to get it fixed. And also it’s inevitable that whatever part you need, even if it’s a screw, is manufactured only in Mongolia so please allow 4 to 6 months for shipping.

So any real cripple who tries to keep moving in the real world has the duct tape patch jobs to prove it. And it’s about to get a whole lot worse. Like for instance, they passed a law here in Illinois requiring any cripple with a broken chair to obtain prior approval for their repair from a state bureaucracy before Medicaid will pay to have the chair fixed. So that means that before you can order that screw from Mongolia, please allow an additional 4 to 6 months for the state to give you the green light.

And these kinds of austerity bombs are being dropped on cripples all over the world. Increasingly desperate cripples will be stocking up on duct tape like survivalists. Crippled survivalist is becoming a redundant term.

So the cripples are hunkering down, which is great news for Wall Street. Duct tape stocks will go through the roof! And their value will continue to rise for years to come. Because when lawmakers are asked how cripples will survive the next austerity blast, they’ll probably have to shrug and say, “Let them eat duct tape.”

Viva Roger Ebert!

2013-04-05T22:29:00.001-05:00

A couple years ago I did a Q&A interview with Roger Ebert. Here it is if you want to read it:

http://www.itodaynews.com/april2011/IT_News_28_ME_Ebert_4-9-11.htm

I wanted to interview Roger because I was fascinated by the way he conducted himself after winding up with his new, startlingly different face when part of his jaw was removed in cancer surgery. He wrote about it eloquently in a piece entitled ”'I'm Not a Pretty-Boy Anymore.” It was in response to those who advised him not to attend the annual Ebertfest film festival. He wrote:

“I was told photos of me in this condition would attract the gossip papers. So what?... I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks... We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my festival…”

And he found humor in the hard reality that he was no longer able to speak.

“Why do I want to go? Above all, to see the movies then to meet old friends and great directors and personally thank all the loyal audience members who continue to support the festival. At least, not being able to speak, I am spared the need to explain why every film is ‘overlooked,’ or why I wrote ‘Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.’ Being sick is no fun. But you can have fun while you’re sick.”

That last sentence caught me most. That to me was the radical essence of the message about being crippled Roger put forth just by continuing to be himself in whatever form that took on: Cripples can still have a lot of fun.

Screw you, paparazzi!

So after I conducted the email interview I added Roger to my Smart Ass Cripple email blast list. I hoped to hell I wouldn’t receive a reply from him like, “Please remove me from your silly little list! Don’t you know I’m a big celebrity?” But instead, my blog viewer stats suddenly shot up as Roger tweeted and Facebooked some of my entries. He even wrote a way-too-flattering entry in his own blog about Smart Ass Cripple. Here it is if you want to read it:

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2012/07/a_cripple_who_is_a_smart_ass.html

I imagine just about all of you out there would never have heard of Smart Ass Cripple if not for Roger. Just about every good and positive development that has resulted from this goofy endeavor happened because of Roger.

I only met Roger in person once but I feel like he was my good friend. That’s because your most valued friends are those that offer you the most support, encouragement and kindness.

I’m not sure what I gave him in return. I hope it was that some of this Smart Ass Cripple stuff struck the same chord in him that his writings like the one above struck in me.

Anyway, I will always be grateful to my cripple comrade, Roger. So the next time you take a drink, whatever it is you drink, please offer up a toast to Roger.

Those Lucky Arthritis People

2013-03-31T12:17:00.001-05:00

Arthritis people have a lot of nerve calling themselves crippled. They sure don’t look crippled to me. They all look happy and clean and upright and smiley.

I know this because there’s a glossy magazine called Arthritis Today put out by the Arthritis Foundation. It has a lot of articles about stuff like diet and exercise for arthritis people. And the arthritis people on the cover are always happy and clean and upright and smiley. Here’s a sample:

I’ve known a lot of arthritis people. Hell, I’m married to one. And I’m confused because most of them don’t look like all those people on the cover of Arthritis Today. A lot of times their fingers are gnarled and spooley and thin as twigs. They can’t turn their heads because their neck vertebrae are fused. Some ride around in wheelchairs and scooters. They really do look crippled.

But nobody looks like that on the cover of Arthritis Today. I don’t know why that is. It must mean that the arthritis people have either been a) cured or b) re-branded.

Either way, those arthritis people are some lucky cripples. Some people are trapped in crippling conditions that are so grim and hopeless that their image is beyond polishing. They’re a long way from having their own lifestyle magazine. For instance, there’s no magazine called Paranoid Schizophrenia Today. I checked because you never know. But there isn’t. If there was, the articles would be like “How to Jog Away Those Pesky Paranoid Delusions.”

The world isn’t ready for a magazine like that. And some crippling conditions will never have their own lifestyle magazine just because they’re too damn hard to pronounce. Like for instance, there’s Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease. There’s no lifestyle magazine called Pelizaeus-Merzbacher Disease Today. I checked because you never know. But there isn’t. I’m sure glad I don’t have that damn disease. It’s hopeless. You can’t even make a decent acronym out of it. There are a ton of diseases out there clamoring for attention and it’s hard to get a jump on the competition. You need more than just a sad story. Everyone has a sad story. You need an easy-to-remember acronym, like AIDS. If possible, the acronym should be catchy like a jingle. Some diseases have managed to get noticed without an acronym, like PTSD. PTSD doesn’t work as an acronym because it makes people laugh. It sounds like you’re trying to get someone’s attention by whispering.

But maybe it’s not so weird. Maybe the arthritis people are like every other population. There are a dozen or so magazine cover models and there’s everybody else.

Three Finger Brown's Crazy Cripple Curve

2013-03-25T21:52:00.000-05:00

Mordecai Peter Centennial Brown was one of the greatest baseball pitchers of all time. He’s in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame. Between 1904 and 1912 he won 186 games for the Chicago Cubs.

His nickname was “Three Finger” Brown because he had three fingers on his right hand. That’s kind of weird, nicknaming somebody after what makes them crippled. That’s like Bill “Broken Neck” Smith or Sally “Traumatic Brain Injury” Jones.

And actually, Three Finger Brown's right hand had four and a half fingers. His right index finger was cut off when he was a kid and he caught his hand in some farm machinery. But all his fingers on that hand were fucked up because he supposedly fell while chasing a rabbit as a child and broke them all. So, technically, his nickname should have been Mordecai “Completely Fucked up Right Hand” Brown.

But being crippled is what made Three Finger Brown a great pitcher. Ty Cobb said Three Finger’s curveball was the most devastating pitch he ever tried to hit. Because of the way Three Finger gripped the ball in his fucked up hand, his curve jumped and dipped like no one else’s.

That was long before pitchers were paid a zillion dollars. Suppose Three Finger was twirling his crazy cripple curve today. At first, all the other pitchers would see his fucked up pitching hand and laugh and call him names and not let him join in their pitcher games. But soon they’d all be struck by a bad case of cripple envy. Soon they would lop off their index fingers and beat their other fingers with hammers, all in an attempt to fuck up their hands enough to develop a crazy cripple curve of their own. Wouldn't that be cool?

Hell, giving up a finger is a small price to pay for a zillion dollar contract. And ballplayers will do any crazy ass thing in the name of “performance enhancement.” But it's not just ballplayers. Lots of guys are obsessed with “enhancing” their own “performance,” if you know what I mean. The most obsessed are those who perform the least. They attribute their lack of performance opportunities to a lack of “enhancement.” Guys who get trapped in this frame of mind might try any crazy ass enhancement scheme, too. So suppose Mordecai Brown had another nickname derived from some other freakish feature that made him perform better than the rest in another arena—something like Mordecai “Hung Like a Horse” Brown. And suppose, according to the legend, he became so enhanced as a result of mangling his right hand. Cripple envy would be rampant. It would be commonplace to see guys without index fingers, wild-eyed with rejection, out chasing rabbits.

I like to tell myself that I’m more evolved than those guys because I refuse to let others define my manhood. But I don’t know. I begin to doubt myself whenever I encounter Lady Grey tea in the grocery store. Lady Grey is kick-ass tea, but I can’t bring myself to buy a whole box off it because, you know, it’s called Lady Grey. I must be worried that the cashier will wonder what enjoying Lady Grey tea so much says about me. I know I should be much more worried about what giving a crap about what a stupid thing like that says about me says about me. But I can still only comfortably buy Lady Grey in the variety box where she’s surrounded by other butch teas like Irish Breakfast. This is much less conspicuous.

Smart Ass Cripple Spreads a Little Sunshine

2013-03-18T20:59:00.002-05:00

Sometimes, in my role as a cripple, I am called upon to bring a little sunshine into the lives of those who are not crippled.

I’m happy to do it. I feel as if it’s my duty to brighten up their day. One such opportunity to spread a little sunshine arose not too long ago when I went to the drug store to pick up some condoms. The condoms were beyond my reach so I looked for a store clerk to assist me. I looked around. Whom would I select to have their day brightened? I chose a young woman stocking shelves in the next aisle. I led her to the condom rack. I pointed out the pack of condoms I wanted and she took it down off the hook, all while maintaining her professional poker face. But I knew that deep down inside she couldn’t wait to go home so she could tell whomever she goes home to, “Guess what! Today I helped a crippled guy buy condoms!”

So now I look forward to buying condoms for more reasons than one. Next time I think I’ll really give some lucky clerk an exciting story to tell by selecting the extra-jumbo size condoms or something exotic like the mint-flavored French ticklers. Or maybe I’ll buy a dozen condoms and come back the next day and buy a dozen more.

By doing this, I am not just spreading sunshine. I am also spreading cripple awareness. Some cripples say everything a cripple does in public spreads cripple awareness, even buying condoms. We can’t escape it. We are always representing cripples whether we like it or not, so we have to be on our best behavior. But sometimes I feel I can best spread true cripple awareness by acting like an ass hole. I do this not on behalf of myself but on behalf of those of my crippled brethren who happen to be ass holes. Their rights are often overlooked.

But true freedom for cripples will only be achieved when crippled ass holes have the same rights as ass holes that can walk and talk and see and hear. This doesn’t only apply to cripples. Take gay marriage, for example. The gay people who speak up in public and file lawsuits for the right to marry seem to always be in devoted, long term, supportive, committed relationships. But why can’t any of them be ass holes? I mean, ass holes of every shape and size that are heterosexual have the right to get married, right? They don’t have to reassure everyone that they are wholesome and upstanding before they can get a license. So why should gay people have to do it?

It’s like when the ACLU stands up for free speech for the Nazis. Free speech means free speech, even for the ass holes. So it goes when you let all the cripples in. It’s a guarantee, as with every other population, that you will let some ass holes in, too. It’s good to remind everybody of that every now and then. And I’m the perfect guy to do it.

The Federal Definition of a Broke Ass Cripple

2013-03-12T15:28:00.000-05:00

I just read something pretty hilarious. It’s called "Supplemental Security Income Modernization Project: Final Report of the Experts."

It has 21 authors. They were the “experts” assembled by the Commissioner of the Social Security Administration to make recommendations on how to “modernize” the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.

SSI is the primary means of income for about 7 million broke ass American cripples. And I do mean broke ass. The average monthly SSI payment is $519.

And like I said, the report is quite a laugh riot in spots. But if I were you, I wouldn’t run out and buy a copy. You should just wait until "Supplemental Security Income Modernization Project: Final Report of the Experts" is adapted into a blockbuster movie. Because you have to machete your way through acres of tedium in order to find the best comic gems. For example, there’s a big belly laugh in chapter III, which has the whacky title of “Needs-Based Issues-- Including the Elimination of In-Kind Support and Maintenance and Raising the Resources Limits While Streamlining the Exclusions.” The following uproarious phrase is found on page 70: “A majority of the experts supported increasing the resources limits to $7,000 for an individual and $10,500 for a couple…”

I almost peed my pants when I read that! Because this report came out in 1992, when the SSI resource limit was $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple. That meant that was pretty much all the money someone getting SSI could have to their name without getting kicked off the program. Guess what the resource limit is today. If you guessed that it’s still $2,000 for an individual and $3,000 for a couple, you win our grand prize!

So not only do SSI cripples have to be broke ass, they have to be broke ass in 1992 dollars! And here’s an even funnier line from the report: “All of the 19 experts who expressed a view… support an increase in the current $30 payment limit applicable to certain residents of medical institutions.” Those “certain residents of medical institutions” are SSI cripples who live in places like nursing homes. They are the broke assiest of broke ass cripples. In 1992, they were only allowed to keep $30 a month from their SSI checks. The rest was turned over to the nursing home. So guess how much “certain residents of medical institutions” get to keep today. While you think about it I’ll go pour myself another shot. Okay I’m back. And the answer is------------ (drum roll)------------------ $30 a month!

Here’s one more knee-slapper from the report’s cover letter, written by Arthur Flemming, the leader of the panel of experts and former Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Flemming acknowledged that “modernizing” SSI costs money. “We are, however, the richest nation in the world,” he wrote. He then cited a Congressional Budget Office study that said the after-tax income of the upper one percent of Americans increased by 70 per cent between 1977 and 1989 while the income of lower 20 per cent declined nine percent. Flemming wrote, “I believe that it is only fair to ask the upper one percent to share a small portion of their wealth with the poor.”

Isn’t that priceless? How preciously naïve!

Nothing has changed because the broke ass aren’t a lobbying force. Oh there are noble liberals who lobby on behalf of the broke ass. But it’s not the same. The broke ass need to speak for themselves. A name like Broke Ass Disabled Activists on Social Security makes for a good acronym (BADASS). But I hate to use that “d” word—disabled. It’s much too polite. Cripple has so much more punch. And besides, cripples aren’t the only ones who are broke ass. You don’t have to be crippled to be broke ass, but it sure gives you a good head start.

A more inclusive and thus powerful lobbying force would be something like the National Association of the Broke Ass. Some cripples like to point out that everyone should care about what happens to the cripples because anyone can become crippled at any moment. The same can be said of the broke ass.

It wouldn’t take much for the organized broke ass to shake things up. All they have to do is show up where politicians hang out. There’s nothing politicians fear more than being confronted by hoards of the broke ass. They'll take swift action. They’ll demand that the Department of Homeland Security build an alligator-infested moat around Capitol Hill.

Chasing politicians is fun and its good exercise. It beats sitting around waiting to be modernized.

The Quest

2013-03-05T22:00:00.001-06:00

I spent the majority of my adolescence pissing into a mayonnaise jar.

There were two reasons for this. First, I was raised in the frugal “babushka” culture. The American babushkas, primarily of eastern European extraction, were the earliest recyclers, long before recycling was fashionable. Thus we reuse everything that can be reused until we reuse it to death. But we do it not for environmental but for economic reasons. So if after you eat all your mayonnaise you then put the perfectly good and sturdy jar to work as a urinal, you can then take the money you would have otherwise spent on a urinal and spend it on something else or, better yet, put it in the bank! That's the babushka way!

But the other reason I pissed into a mayonnaise jar was because even if I did have money to burn purchasing frivolous things like urinals, it was hard to find a person or place to purchase one from. They didn’t even sell them at drug stores. You almost had to turn to the black market. For some reason urinals were among the most unmentionable of the unmentionables. I don’t know why. They’re just cripple chamber pots.

A good pisser was hard to find. This is not the case today. Today’s cripples have it soft. If they need a urinal, they can find a wide variety of them on Amazon. And unlike many items on Amazon, none of the urinals are used.

This has done a lot to improve the quality of life of the modern cripple. We no longer have to devote a large portion of our time and energy embarking on the great pisser quest. Finding a pisser used to be like finding the holy grail. Once, not too long ago, my wife came home and proclaimed that she had a special gift for me. She proudly presented me a urinal she found at a drug store. She knew I’d be thrilled. It was still in the box and everything! It had that brand new urinal smell!

And a few years before that, still not long ago, I was extra excited on the day I was to visit the FDR memorial in Washington, D.C. Maybe, I thought, just maybe, I might get lucky and find a pisser at the cripple-themed FDR memorial gift shop! Of course by the end of the day I came to the brutal realization of just how naïve I was to believe that the gift shop would stock souvenir pissers. FDR was the leader of the free world so he must have felt great pressure to stand up and piss like a man.

I admit that even I used to feel uneasy about gratuitous displays of pissers. There was this guy who always went around with his pisser hanging right there plain as day on the back of his wheelchair. He rolled around the state capitol with his pisser on the back of his chair, shaking hands with Senators. He’d put on a suit testify at committee hearings: “Because of this state program I am able live with dignity!” And there was his pisser. It made me cringe, but what a hypocrite I was. Would confirming that cripples had bodily functions really ruin our credibility with the Senators?

I’m glad I got over it.

Special Needs

2013-02-27T22:28:00.000-06:00

When they talk about people who have “special needs,” just whom are they talking about? I think they think they’re talking about me.

Oh shit! If that’s the case then that officially makes me “needy.” That means I’m screwed because nobody likes needy people.

I don’t feel like they’re talking about me when they say “special needs.” I can’t think of anything I need that’s all that special. I need to eat, sleep and eliminate bodily waste. I need to breathe. I need to get up out of bed every day and go do something. I need to wash the crud off of my body. I need to laugh. Nothing special about all that. I need to get laid. (Maybe that’s where the special part comes in, at least as far as cripples are concerned.)

When I think of people with special needs, I think of like vampires. Vampires need to drink virgin blood every day in order to stay “alive.” They can’t get by on burgers and fries like the rest of us. Vampires need to sleep in coffins during daylight hours. Now those are special needs.

Vampires are needy as hell! I know that vampires are a bad example of human neediness because they’re make-believe. And yes, I do acknowledge that there are real live humans who do indeed have very special, very extraordinary needs that place a heavy burden on the rest of society. The most obvious example is Trump. There’s one needy sonuvabitch for you. That guy needs a constant, endless flow of money. He needs money like the rest of us need oxygen. He thinks he’ll die if he doesn’t get more money. No matter how much money he has today, he needs to have more tomorrow. His need for money is far beyond special. It’s grotesque.

Unfortunately, Trump is not make-believe. And he’s not the only person with this type of special need. And almost all of those with this terrible affliction are verts (which is short for verticals, which is slang for people who walk). But when someone says “special needs,” they’re never talking about verts. They’re always talking about cripples.

Nobody wants to be perceived as needy because nobody likes needy people. We all act like we love the needy but we don’t. The only people who like hanging around needy people are heavy duty codependent types. I bet if somebody took a survey to determine the leading reasons why people get dumped by their lovers, at the top of the list would be neediness. “He/she was just tooooo needy.”

That’s the way it works. Don’t get too needy or you’ll get dumped.

One Last Laugh

2013-02-22T21:36:00.000-06:00

I’ve found a new way to amuse myself, which, after all, is what life is all about.

First, I picture some anthropologists about a thousand years from now discovering my crippled skeleton. That makes me chuckle. My skeleton will be a keeper for them because they’ll know right away it belonged to a cripple. It bears the ravages of sitting on my ass all day. It’s twisted and bent. It’s contracted up fetal. The bones are soupy soft. Sitting takes a toll. If God intended for humans to sit on our asses all day, she would have made us all Congressmen. But my body either sits in a wheelchair (or on a crapper) or lies in bed. Every day I abuse my body by making it get out of bed.

Finding a skeleton like mine is the kind of thing that gives anthropologists a great big boner. They’ll construct a whole theory about who I was and what became of me. And they’ll present me and their theory at some hot shot anthropology conference.

And picturing that really cracks me up. Because I’m a cripple they’ll probably assume all kinds of things about me. They’ll conclude that I couldn’t keep up with my tribe and so I was abandoned. They’ll probably see evidence of the time I broke my femur. What will they surmise? Here’s what really happened: I was acting like a drunken smart ass. I was in college. We were drinking in our favorite dump bar. The bathroom was inaccessible so I pissed in the alley. I forgot to refasten my wheelchair seat belt. A friend gave me a ride back to my dorm in my cripple van. I kept making fun of her driving. She hit the brakes so she could pull over and tell me to get the hell out. I somersaulted out of my wheelchair and broke my femur.

What are the odds the anthropologist will get that one right? They’ll probably also assume that I once lived in public housing for cripples. That’s correct. But will they thus conclude that I hosted a wild pagan baby shower? A friend was pregnant. Her pagan friends wanted to have a coed baby shower in a location accessible for her crippled friends. So we used my apartment. It was a raucous night of unwrapping baby-themed gifts, drinking, dancing and smoking weed. I’m lucky we didn’t get raided. Hosting a wild pagan baby shower probably would be grounds for eviction from public housing. You can get kicked out of public housing for farting too loud.

I don’t think the anthropologist will deduce all that just from looking at my crippled bones either. So I really want to be a fly on the wall at that conference and watch them get my back story all wrong. It’ll be good for one last laugh.

Making that happen won’t be easy. It will require having my head cut off and frozen. And then my head will have to be thawed out and reanimated and smuggled into the hot shot anthropology conference by a future generation of sympathetic smart asses. And how will the anthropologists explain why their prize crippled skeleton has no skull? I can’t wait to hear what kind of crazy shit they concoct!

This is a long way to go for one last laugh. Pulling it off is a long shot. But it gives me something to look forward to.

The Day I Quit Walking Day

2013-02-17T18:27:00.000-06:00

It’s like when you don’t know your dog’s birthday so you just pick a day and declare that day to be your dog’s birthday and have a party. You stick a birthday candle in a hunk of raw hamburger and give it to your dog.

So I declare February 28 to be The Day I Quit Walking Day. Why not? It’s as good of a day as any to have a party. I wish I would have thought to note the date on the actual day I quit walking. But I didn’t think much of it at the time. It wasn’t premeditated or anything. I just decided one day that trying to walk was a pain in the ass and I wasn’t going to bother anymore.

It’s coming up on 40 years now. I was a teenager at the state-operated boarding school for cripples. My leg braces were locked at the knee so I sat in my wheelchair with my legs sticking straight out. The therapist rocked me up to a standing position in the parallel bars. I walked like Frankenstein in cement boots dragging a ball and chain. I leaned way to one side, thrusted the opposite leg forward a few inches. I took two steps forward like that, two steps back. That's all I could do. I sat down. The end.

Don’t believe what they say in those feature stories you see when a linebacker becomes a cripple. Walking isn’t just a matter of desire, determination and discipline . If it was, therapists would take a whole different approach during rehab. It would be more like boot camp. “Get up off your lazy ass and walk, cripple! LEFT RIGHT HUT HUT LEFT RIGHT! C'mon! Move it! You’re a disgrace!”

I also didn’t like how therapists referred to walking as “ambulation.” Why couldn’t they just call it walking? “It’s time to ambulate!” I think that word bothered me because I was raised Catholic and ambulation sounded like something a priest would tell me I should never ever do. “Bless me father for I have sinned. This morning I ambulated all over my bedroom.”

I told the therapist that was it. No more walking for me. And it was a big load lifted. I could spend that time and energy doing something more fruitful and fun. They sent me to see the head therapist, who implored me to never give up trying to walk. But what was the point? Two steps forward, two steps back. It felt good for me to tell walking to fuck off! “You can’t fire me! I quit!”

While I’m at it, I also need to declare a The Last Day I Used the Stand-up Table Day. That was another thing the therapists did. They laid me on the stand-up table, which was this padded, horizontal pallet. They strapped me in good and tight across the knees and across the chest and all over and then they turned a crank until the stand-up table was vertical and, consequently, so was I. And there I “stood.” I felt like I was bound to a tree. I kept waiting for the therapist to place an apple on my head and shoot it off with a bow and arrow. I felt like a magician’s assistant, backed against the wall and waiting nervously for the magician to fling knives that whiz past my ears. I felt like a scarecrow.

They discontinued that therapy for me without telling me. I don’t know why. I never asked. Just shut up and be grateful. I only wish they would have told me after my final crank back to Horizontalville that they were officially giving up on the stand-up table. I probably would have remembered the date of this great milestone.

Be it resolved that henceforth, February 27 shall be The Last Day I Used the Stand-up Table Day. That way for two days straight I can party myself silly.

The True Story of the Almost-Was Cripple Colony on the Antarctic

2013-02-12T21:43:00.002-06:00

There was a time only about 20 years ago when it was very dangerous for cripples in motorized wheelchair to venture out of the house. Danger lurked around every turn. You literally took your life in your hands.

Back in those days, new horror stories surfaced every week about runaway wheelchairs that were suddenly kicking into gear and taking their screaming occupants on unsolicited roller coaster rides. A guy who sold wheelchairs said to me, in a foreboding tone of voice, “One guy went right over a cliff!” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that! Gone!”

An image burst open in my brain of a cripple in a motorized wheelchair sailing over the Grand Canyon like a motorcycle jumper, like a crippled hang glider without a hang glider, like Thelma and Louise. I resolved that if I ever went to see the Grand Canyon, I’d be sure to wear a parachute.

Still I wondered if these stories were more of those bullshit cripple myths, where everyone’s heard of the cripple in the story but nobody’s ever met him. And I never knew anybody who knew anybody who knew anybody who knew anybody whose wheelchair went berserk like that.

But even the Food and Drug Administration was hearing the stories. There were no reported deaths but there were stories of chairs taking off over curbs and off piers. And sometimes it happened when an emergency vehicle like a police car or ambulance was in the vicinity.

Holy shit! Imagine that! You’re a happy fishing cripple just whistling the day away. An ambulance goes by somewhere in the distance and the next thing you know, you’re waist deep in the lagoon. Now what do you do? Well, whatever you do, don’t call an ambulance!

Now I’m not a religious man but if my chair started spinning and bucking and popping wheelies and barreling into traffic, I’d call a priest. Screw the FDA. Have a priest exorcize the damn thing, waving an urn of burning incense over it while reciting Latin. Or maybe I’d call NASA. Because the other culprit I’d suspect would be smart ass Martians, looking down from their hovering saucers and laughing their asses off as they zap cripples with a special ray that make wheelchairs dance a crazy Mambo.

The FDA inspected a bunch of wheelchair and determined that what caused them to go haywire was electromagnetic interference (EMI), emitted not just from certain two-way radios like those in ambulances but also from cell phones. Cell phones! And so the FDA made manufacturers put a big yellow warning sticker on motorized wheelchairs that said something like CAUTION: STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM AMBULANCES AND CELL PHONES.

I remember those stickers. But I guess the problem was fixed by installing a shield on new chairs that protects against EMI. So the sticker is now gone which is damn good thing. What if cripples had to avoid cell phones today? We’d all have to move to the Antarctic.

The Five Stages of Busted Wheelchair Grief

2013-02-05T18:20:00.000-06:00

Susan once told me her dream lover man would be a Marxist-Leninist wheelchair repairman.

That’s how a Marxist-Leninist quadriplegic views romance. I don’t know if Susan is still a Marxist-Leninist so I don’t know if that particular dream lover trait matters anymore. I also don’t know if the “man” part is a deal-breaker anymore for her either. But Susan is still a quad so the wheelchair repair criterion is probably more desirable than ever.

If I was cruising the matchmaking sites, I know that’s what I’d be looking for: Single white male seeks…. What would be the acronym abbreviation for wheelchair repairwoman? WRW?

SWM seeks WRW. She’s the only woman who can soothe me in my time of deepest sorrow and pain, which is when my wheelchair breaks. When your wheelchair suddenly refuses to move, you are plunged into a state of despair. You long to return to that joyous time in the past when you could get about at will, like five minutes ago.

A WRW understands all that. She can make my spirit whole again, with just an alluring turn of her wrench. That really turns me on! You can’t get any sexier than that.

A WRW also fully understands the five stages of grief every cripple goes through when their wheelchair is busted. Stage one: Pissed off! Goddammit! I can’t move! And I won’t be able to move again for months! The repair shop isn’t open til tomorrow! And they won’t send a truck to pick up my chair until a week from Tuesday! And it’ll be the Tuesday after that before they let me know what’s wrong with it! Goddammit!!! After working through that stage, the cripple proceeds to the next stage. Stage two: Pissed off! And then I’ll have to call Medicaid and beg them to pay to fix my chair! And they won’t return my call until a week from the following Tuesday! And then they’ll send me a form 96Z Repair Preauthorization Affidavit! And the form will get lost in the mail! GODDAMMIT!!! And then comes the next stage. Stage three: Oh quit whining! Oh quit whining! At least you broke down in your living room! You could’ve broken down in the street, in the middle of a blizzard no less! And what about the cripples in Guatemala, huh? They don’t even have wheelchairs! They live in mud huts! The Guatemalan capitol building is a mud hut with a rotunda! But that stage is quite fleeting and is quickly replaced by the next stage. Stage four: Pissed off! Fuck Guatemala! I’m stuck in my living room! And finally comes the last and most devastating stage. Stage five: Paralyzing sticker shock! Say whaaat? With my spend down and copayments I’ve gotta pay $6,725.38 to get my chair fixed? And all I need is a fuse? What am I supposed to do, sell my fucking kidneys? God I’m so depressed!

At a time like this, my sweet WRW knows just what to do. She has that magic touch. She restores my mobility. She restores my manhood.

Cherry on Top

2013-01-31T17:16:00.000-06:00

When I was an inmate at the state-operated boarding school for cripples, aka the Sam Houston Institute of Technology (SHIT), there was one staff member who derived sadistic delight from torturing me.

I’m speaking of the dietician. As soon as they checked me into the place I became her captive prey. She immediately slapped me onto a strict low calorie diet. God how I hated her bloody guts!

Here’s a graphic example of how her sick mind worked. First of all, inmates received their dinner trays at 4:30! Did you hear me? 4 fucking 30! What human being under age 95 who doesn’t live in Miami eats dinner at 4:30? One day all the kids who weren’t at the diet table (fatties had to sit at a segregated table) got chop suey or something that was gourmet by SHIT standards. I lifted the lid off my plate and what was my main course? Two scoops of cottage cheese atop a sad shard of iceberg lettuce! And each scoop was garnished on top with a maraschino cherry! Are you kidding me? It made them look like tits! What kind of twisted prank was this? Putting a cheery cherry on top of my cottage cheese entrée was like presenting me with a dead dog gift wrapped with a pretty pink bow! Somewhere in the mess hall there had to be a hidden camera focused square on the fatty table through which the dastardly dietician spied on us from her office in the darkest nether region of the basement. I pictured her doubled over with diabolical laughter at the sight of our despondent expressions when we lifted our lids. “Priceless!”

I still hate low cal diets! They’re a scam! You can’t tell me that in the richest nation on earth we don’t have the technology to ensure that everyone weighs pretty much what they should. We drain fat out people with liposuction, right? So why not lipotransfer? Hear me out! There are plenty of people running around who eat like a goddam horse but still stay skinny as a broomstick. Those people are so fucking irritating. Everybody knows somebody like that. So I could be a fat donor for one of them. Hook us up through a tube. I know it’s not as easy as it sounds. Donors and recipients will have to be tested to make sure it’s the right fat match. But we do it for hearts and lungs and kidneys so why not fat? That’s right, I’m advocating for a radical redistribution of fat in America. We left it up to the free market and look what happened. Some people ended up with way more fat than others. Lipotransfer is the solution. It would make diets obsolete! And dieticians, too!

But anyway, I survived the brutality of the SHIT dietician with the help of the Fried Chicken Underground, better known as Benjamin the night janitor. Word got around that Benji was an easy mark. If you approached him on the sly, slipped him a few coins and gave him a sad story, he might go get you something from the Chicken Shack across the street. He’d complain about it under his breath. “Gonna get me in trouble.” But when he returned from his dinner break, he smuggled in brown paper bags. I opened mine in a secluded corner. Nestled in a rectangular, cardboard basket was a fried drumstick and slice of doughy white bread soaked through with hot sauce. Glorious.