The Museum of Sudden Disappearances

Noir at the Bar 2-20-25

2025-02-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

Noir at the Bar

2025-02-12T16:03:00.000-08:00

Noir at the Bar

Tick...tock...tick...tock...tick...tock...

Really looking forward to this. Gonna pull out all the stops. Gonna take a shower, brush my teeth, put on clean jeans. Cologne, deodorant. Buy new shoes. The works.

Ideally, in a perfect world, this is how the evening will unfold. The ultimate cocktail. A crime fiction reading that ends in a crime nightmare reality.

First, I read a chapter from my current manuscript, a crime thriller. Then the cafe's front door explodes open. Interpol, the FBI, ATF, DEA, DHS, Secret Service, and a SWAT team bull-rush inside. I get hammered upside the head with beer bottles and chairs, tasered, handcuffed, thrown facedown on the filthy floor while being shit-stomped, pepper sprayed, screaming, and then dragged by my broken ankles to the door (my brand new shoes fall off & some jerk steals them). A horrified crowd jumps up and begins chanting, "Better you than me!"

I'm dragged outside. I'm yelling, "Whatever it is, I didn't do it!" Six police cars are flashing red and blue disco lights. Sirens, bullhorns, gunshots. An FBI agent snarls something about "Guantanamo...get this terrorist to Gitmo..."

A black pillow case is yanked over my head. I can't see shit. I'm tossed into a black helicopter waiting on the rooftop of the liquor store across the street. The pilot has a Russian accent. Or a North Korean accent. No wait. The pilot sounds like Elon Musk trashed on a 10 day bender on methamphetamines. His eyes are as big as basketballs. The co-pilot says, "Git him to Gitmo then we can git home, git it? Now let's git the hockey puck outa here."

I can't wait. Crime fiction, cocktails, and Cuban incarceration. Really looking forward to this.

2024-04-18T13:45:00.000-07:00

6 Totally Super Ultra Extra Rare Things Found on Earth & Beyond

#1 - Purple Carrots

Though all types of carrots are nutritious, purple carrots contain powerful antioxidants. Eating purple carrots may improve heart health, encourage weight loss, and can also be used as daggers to defend yourself. If someone calls the cops on you, eat the evidence.

#2 - Ring Galaxies

These cosmic structures are incredibly rare in the universe and are formed through complex interactions between galaxies. In a ring galaxy, a smaller galaxy collides with a larger one, similar to a corporate hostile takeover. Which proves that the universe snubs little, starry-eyed entrepreneurs and embraces predatory cosmic capitalism.

#3 - Jeweled Squid

Venturing into the depths of the ocean, we encounter the jeweled squid, a creature of astounding rarity. Which explains why they cost more than two dollars at Wal-Mart’s pet department.

#4 - The Luminous Forest, Japan

Every year in summer, these green glowing fungi spring up in forests in certain parts of Japan. Batteries included. Tourists are cautioned not to trip on extension cords.

#5 - White Peacock

White peacocks are a striking example of rarity in the animal kingdom. These birds are not albinos but rather possess a genetic mutation called spraypaint, which reduces the pigmentation in their feathers. Unlike their colorful counterparts, white peacocks have an ethereal beauty characterized by the distinct smell of acrylic paint (fruity, pungent, alcohol-like). Pictured above is Sherwin Williams “flipping the bird.” Sherwin is the former, ostentatious White House press secretary for the former, ostentatious…oh never mind.

#6 – Greatest 2024 Happy New Year Card in the Universe

Exactly 10 years ago (4-17-14), I was lying on a gurney at Mass General Hospital, buried beneath a surgical drape that resembled a funeral pall. I was blind in one eye. My detached retina was getting reattached. Two surgeons, laser surgery. I had to lay still for over an hour. Not move, not sneeze.

The whole time, I kept thinking about what I had seen that morning. A stranger from the other side of the planet, Australia, had posted a drop-dead wonderful review of my Jurassic Jim novel, “Past is Present,” on Amazon. I had devoured her comments about 200 times. Someone had truly “got” Jim Fleetwood. Then I had printed a copy of it and hustled to the hospital.

That afternoon, while on the gurney, I kept thinking about the folded piece of paper in my pocket. The stellar review that no doubt made Jim Fleetwood do hand springs. Midway through the surgery, I was tempted to ask Dr. David Wu and Dr. Cynthia Qi’An for a time-out. I wanted to tell ‘em, “You gotta read this review. The reviewer is perfectly in tune with outsiders, dreamers, and Detroiters. Whoever this person is, you gotta clone her. That way, I’d get the perfect readership. Heart, humor, the works. I’d never again have to send an unread query letter to an agent.”

Not long after that, an email was exchanged with “Francesca.” Then another, and so on. Pretty soon, I had the greatest beta reader and feedback-giver in the world for new works of fiction, blog posts, query letters, and all the other lunatic aspects of this ink-stained business.

And not just the lit’ry life. We also exchange notes and rattle on about life on Planet Earth, which is located in the universe or the multiverse. Or, at the rate things are going, the tumultiverse. That’s the universe of nonstop tumult, stupidity and shitty behavior. See, I can write stuff like that and my friend will never tell me to “grow up.”

Ten years and counting. Holy Jesus. How rare is it to find a friend such as this, at this stage of my life? My hunch? It’s rarer than purple carrots and white peacocks named Sherwin.

Francesca, jumbo thanks!

“Writing is a lonely job. Having someone who believes in you makes a lot of difference. They don't have to make speeches. Just believing is usually enough.”

― Stephen King, “On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft”

2022-10-15T16:47:00.017-07:00

Venn Buddhism

According to Google University:

A Venn diagram is a widely used diagram style that shows the logical relation between sets, popularized by John Venn in the 1880s. The diagrams are used to teach elementary set theory, and to illustrate simple set relationships in probability, logic, statistics, linguistics and computer science.

Or put it this way. Ever meet someone at a bar and they asked, "Do you have VD?" Well, they are referring to a Venn diagram. This thing here:

Here's a slightly more colorful one.

See? In layman's terms, it means some stuff shares some stuff with some other stuff. Such as this:

Alas, if only crocodiles could fly, they could travel by land, sea and air. Who wouldn't want to see a croc fly through an office window on the 33rd floor of a downtown insurance company, just to bust the boredom. Anyway, Venn Buddhism is about the overlap of two things. One is politics.

In recent years, many politicians have been described as performative. It's all about performance, exaggeration, spittle-flecked fake moral outrage, cameras, applause, and overall acting up. Me, me, me. Which used to be the chief domain of kids in kindergarten. Well, them days done up and boogied. Childish behavior? That's spelled a-d-u-l-t-h-o-o-d. In fact, don't sell yourself short and be childish. Be a thumb-sucker, be infantile.

These days, it's all about performance art. Really, really, really low-brow, nonstop dumbassery. Why? Because shame died a long time ago. This is the unmarked Grave of Shame.

RIP - Respect, Integrity, Pride

(who needs 'em?)

Wait. This just in. Breaking news. Catgender alert. Some pols claim kids are identifying as cats.

https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/icymi-nbc-20-politicians-promote-bizarre-claim-that-youth-are-identifying-as-cats

Here's proof.

"I need psychiatric help. Take me to the veterinarian."

This kid? Hey. Cat today, flying crocodile tomorrow. I can easily see this brat morphing into a flying gator and swooping down on traffic, smashing through front windshields, and eating people as they drive their cars during rush hour. This kid has Armageddon written all over her face. Little Penelope Sue Ann Kibbles? Hell no...Satan! This little twit keeps her kitty litter box by her school desk, daring anyone to grab it. The littler box is her portal into gender-Hades. Ten years from now? Convicted mass murderer. She'll go down in criminal history as the Krocodile Killer, eating drivers tooling down the expressway. She'll be squatting on the overpass, peering down with her reptilian eyes, waiting to attack the next asshole who drives under the bridge. She'll bite his head off. Her gator tail will swing and crush anyone in the back seat. Then she'll steal the car and zoom away and there'll be an all-points-bulletin for Kibbles the Krocodile Killer on a nationwide terror spree biting off people's heads and eating hitchhikers and also driving without a license while shitty music strangles the car radio.

Penelope Sue Ann Kibbles, fugitive, eating a zebra in the Detroit River

No one can stop the Infantile Krocodile Killer. No one. Planet Earth is phucked (note: one should never swear in front of children, only childish adults).

Unless, you know, what's-his-dumb-ass gets elected in the nick of time and puts the kibosh on Little Miss Kibbles imminent crime spree.

Seriously. Identity is a slippery slope, with or without the demonic presence of a kitty litter box. And so are political ambitions. Which brings this blog to the Mount Olympus for performance artists. The wrestling ring.

2 candidates debating during a televised debate

The candidate on the left is running on an anti-crime, domestic violence awareness, anti-vegetarian platform. His top donor? Tyson Foods. The preoccupied candidate on the right is reconsidering his stance on Medicare for all.

Being an extremist has its upside. Namely, the Triple A. Attention and Applause for being an Asshole. Small price to pay. Donors vs. Dignity? C'mon, you know the answer to that. Now, this next dude? He's running for, I don't know, whogivesaphuck, president. His platform? Cat Kiddies will be exiled to re-education camps in Idaho where they will get reacquainted with toilet seats, urinals, or, if drunk, do the manly man thing and piss in the kitchen sink. The dude below? The gladiator who, with a gut punch, will reorient your cat bladder and make it a normal bladder? He's known as...

The Bladiator

This dude? Photographed at Bellevue Hospital? Guess again. Candidate. He said if he doesn't win, it means the election is a scam run by frauds and he will personally trigger a civil war where millions of people will have the opportunity to defecate and die in the streets as a show of support. His name?

Hoax Hogan for U.S. Senate

No worries. There's more. Take a peep at this one. She's running for congress from Georgia. Her bio states that she's been a straight A student since kindergarten, when she updated the Theory of Relativity with a crayon on the living room wall, and has composed a symphony, an opera, a novel, and a kazoo sonata every day since second grade while simultaneously painting masterpieces, right up until yesterday when she put her pen down and sold her toy piano. She recently retired as president of Mensa International, due to a scheduling conflict regarding her training for more gold medals in the Olympics in 25 different events. Anyone who calls her a liar will experience the face-claw hold until their eyes pop like pimples.

How do we know she's telling the truth? Because she said so. The phuck, y'all deaf and dumb?

Behold, meet her highness.

Witch Hunt

This dreamboat? Gotta love his political slogan.

Dropkick the Washington Machine,

Stop & Lick the American Dream

What office is the bumble-bee man running for? Does it matter? Shut up and send the checks.

Which brings us to Venn Buddhism. According to, yup, Google University, Zen is "...big on intuitive understanding, on just 'getting it,' and not so hot on philosophizing." In other words, what you are about to see...you will understand immediately. No brain push-ups or pull-ups required.

This is a Zen Diagram. Or Venn Buddhism. With two circles, it shows the logical relation between extremist politicians and pro wrestlers. It illustrates the difference versus the shared space. It asks the fundamental question that's never asked on, say, TV's Meet the Press, or...Fox News. It asks, "Given their antics, can you imagine many of today's candidates, untethered to decency and principle, wearing masks and wrestling trunks? In short, what's the theatrical difference between an extremist and a pro wrestler?"

What rhymes with Zen diagram? Ready?

Pigpen Diagram

where the extremists and wrestlers

are penned in like pigs

Actually, it looks like this. These days, things are looking a tad darker than usual.

Zen diagram or solar eclipse or...

Total Eclipse of Human Decency

Let's end this little exercise on a chipper note. Imagine. Someday soon, this may be the next president of the United States. And why will voters vote for him? Because they, like he, knows that pandemic masks are for candy-ass sissies. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't mask up!

Hailing from Parts Unknown...

Pigpen Zen

a/k/a

The Stable Genius

You may wonder, what fires up Pigpen Zen? What makes him don the mask each day and head for the crowds and cameras? Simple. He's driven by lust for raw power, but also absolute terror. Terror of losing the race. Terror of being swept off the public stage. Terror of becoming--gasp!--just another phucking constituent. What's a constituent? That's the dude or dudette that has no power, no donors, no cheers, no applause, no facetime in front of the cameras. They're the invisible people living invisible lives. Pigpen see the constituent as the anonymous, scripted loser who always loses in one of the warm-up, preliminary bouts. The big-bellied stiff who gets pummeled and then thrown over the ropes like a trash bag and into the bloodthirsty crowd.

The constituent has no power.

Pigpen Zen understands that losing is not an option. If he teeters toward losing, he'll pull a cigarette lighter out of his trunks and burn his opponent's face. When the ref disqualifies him, he'll extend his arms like Jesus on the cross, face the crowd and screech, "Lighter? What lighter? You see a lighter?"

That roaring, rumbling sound you hear? An angry avalanche of avenging supporters rushing down from the cheap seats, heading for the ring.

As Pigpen Zen foretold, this will be Rapture. Pigpen, shepherding 10,000 constituents, will announce, "Come hither, I alone can fix your souls." They will elevate in the air as the arena's roof ruptures open. They will float en masse into the clouds.

Welcome to America's Passion Play.

Fortunately, the font in this quote is eye-squinty small and hard to read, because Winston Churchill's message is a real downer. Skip it. Pretend it's not there. Do not peek at his totally unrealistic opinion.

Earth Prime vs. Earth Two

2022-04-12T14:29:00.003-07:00

Spot Quiz

Here’s a brain-bouncer as we slide into the spring of 2022. Who are the two most famous 44-year-old men on Earth-Prime? Here's a hint. They're not soul mates.

Tick...tick...tick. Time’s up.

1) Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, age 44 (born: 1/25/78), embattled, sleepless president of Ukraine with a jumbo heart.

most inspirational president and comedian

of Cenozoic era

(bar none)

2) Donald John Trump Jr., age 44 (born: 12/31/77), American political activist, businessman, author, and former...uh...television presenter.

The brain-bouncer? Here goes.

Imagine a parallel world (Earth Two) where Donnie Junior is the heroic president of Ukraine, decked out daily in an olive-green tee and galvanizing the battered masses, leading the underdogs as they fight for freedom – the ultimate global showdown. Democracy vs. Autocracy.

Imagine...President Donnie Junior...igniting the masses?

Crikey! These two dudes graduated from high school in 1996. Twenty-six years later...presto...here they are on the world stage. A president and a president's son sharing the same indecipherable universe.

Ever hear of a Maalox martini? It's a cocktail made with gin, vermouth and antacid. It's garnished with an olive tee-shirt or, if you prefer it bitter, an ironic twist of lemon.

Serve with ice because, hey, face it, our universe is clearly "on the rocks."

two knights on the night shift

2019-12-20T17:39:00.163-08:00

Two Factory Fugitives Disappear

the legendary Dodge Main Dodgers...still on the run?

- or-

Tales from THE TIME MACHINE, the sequel

Eloi vs. Morlocks

Years ago, my #1 paisano and I were voted #1 Factory Fugitives in the Western Hemisphere. The vote took place inside a voting/photo booth far from home, and we won by a landslide. I asked Tony, "Yo, you sure we're #1?"

Tony pointed to Heaven.

Ha ha Chrysler Corporation...try and nab us...ha ha!

Picture two dudes from Detroit. Botch Cassidy & the Sundunce Kid. We were wandering out West, holed up at a drugstore or a variety store or maybe a middle-of-the-night bus depot, squeezed inside a photo booth. This is what passes for entertainment when you have all the time in the world, no place to crash, and zero cash (we had declared bankruptcy somewhere in Kansas). Life on the lam ain't easy.

We were two escapees from a truly infamous auto assembly line. We had busted out without notification. We never officially quit; we just forgot to return. We, ya know, disappeared.

That summer we were sharing a low-budget penthouse in downtown Detroit. Ground floor, rear of building, facing alley (savvy readers nod, perhaps laugh). Our apartment epitomized the real estate maxim, location, location, location. The only thing missing was a giant, glow-in-the-dark target encircling our windows, visible from the alley. So we nailed horizontal boards across the lower windows to discourage burglars.

our two windows: right side, bottom
(hahaha...try & break in...hahaha)

Unless the burglar was ten-feet tall, he couldn't access the top half of the window. Unless he'd been in training. Unless he'd competed in...

The Burglar Olympics

Meanwhile, Chrysler Corporation would repeatedly hammer us with calls. "Is Anthony Crudo or Thomas Davidson available?"

When either of us would answer the phone, we'd say, "Jeepers, they're not here right now. Can I take a message?" Like our inspirational hero, the sensational Harry Houdini, we were escape artists.

Houdini, auto worker, escapes from Dodge Main, 1920.

This continued like a daily crank call. Sooner or later, Chrysler would hire a hit man to punch us out. Why? If we were left unpunished, it'd send the wrong message. All the other peeps on the line would wonder, "Well, fuckin' A, maybe I should forget to show up too?" This could spark a massive walkout, and put a new spin on the labor union, UAW, United Auto Workers. Chrysler would scream about the United Amnesiac Workers. All because of two goof-offs.

How would we get snuffed? Picture an assassin hunched behind the wheel of a Dodge or a Plymouth, waiting for us to exit our apartment building, and then run over us. Consider the irony of being crushed by a car that you helped assemble. Imagine putting a tire on a car and, days later, as the tire rolls over your forehead, your last words are, "We meet again."

We needed to slip out of town.

One Saturday night, we pounded beers at the dive down the street on Prentis and Second Avenue, the legendary...

Forget New York, this is the Bronx.

[Gloria, the plump, gray-haired Bronx waitress, somewhere in her 70s and impervious to drunks with pool sticks, would shuffle from table to table, take orders for "pounders" (cheap beer in 16-ounce mugs), turn to the bar, and screech, "One up!" Long after midnight, she'd board the city bus, alone, fearless, heading home through a frisky part of Detroit.]

...and decided to go on the run. On Sunday morning, we packed chic summer duds and stale bagels and vanished. Between us, we had minimum resource expenditure opportunities. Our combined cash flow totaled $50. M-a-y-b-e. We thumbed south to the belly-button of Ohio, banged a right, and headed west. Surely the Chrysler assassin was in our rear-view mirror.

Whew.

Picture two scruffy factory rats hitchhiking far from home, sightseeing (stranded) in Colorado or Arizona or New Mexico or does-it-really-matter, and camping off the highway (Roads Scholars).

We were broke, each with a cheap canvas bag strapped over our shoulder, crammed with a rolled-up sleeping bag, extra t-shirts, tank tops, faded jeans, cigarettes, stale socks, and lofty dreams. We were goofing off. We always goofed off. We still goof off.

Shangri-La...a/k/a/ Chrysler's Dodge Main

Tony, disgruntled employee, remorseless goof-off

(Dodge Main mugshot)

Me, co-perpetrator, unrepentant goof-off
(factory rat ID card)

When it comes to goofing off, we’re #1. However, we believe anyone who smiles and laughs nonstop, 24/7, is light years from gritty reality. Life is funny, but...Jesus Christ. On the other hand, anyone who never laughs is far creepier, an incendiary sociopath. In a saner world, flashing a fake smile would be an automatic Class 2 felony. Not quite mass murder (Class 1 felony), but right up there with serial arson, inciting riots, or being caught on camera while urinating in public alongside Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. People with sub-zero smiles inflict frostbite on anyone within eyeshot. Imagine, say, Kim Jong-un or Vladimir Putin at a comedy club. As they fake a laugh, frosty breaths plume out of their mouths.

Humorless lizards excrete through their ears (origin of the expression: shit-for-brains), and have telltale, multi-directional hairstyles. Their combed hair resembles an interchange, pointing in different directions. Their highway hairstyle distracts you from what's spewing between their clenched teeth.

Imagine exiting the barber shop with this?

Only Godzilla in a blue Brioni suit would tell a barber, "Gimme the Interstate 90. Comb it straight down in back, so it drops south. Comb it forward on top, so it hangs over my forehead like an overpass bridge. As for the sides, comb it over my ears so it hangs there like an exit ramp. But the hair above the exit ramps should point to the back of my head, like a two-lane county road, which connects to the hair on top, which is the overpass."

Barber: "Yes, sir."

Ultimate makeover: "Gimme the I-90 haircut"

Godzilla: "But be careful, 'cause I don't want my hair and your scissors to have a head-on collision with the sculpted trestles at my temples. When you're done, reattach my custom earrings, the two miniature speed limit signs which dangle from my earlobes. Cool, huh?"

Barber: "Yes, sir."

Godzilla: "When I meet the ladies, I say, 'Hey, ladies, here I come! I'm gonna break the speed limit and run you over with my irresistible, 14.8-liter inline six-cylinder diesel engine charm.' Instead of a hat, I wear a little toy pickup truck strapped on my head. When I meet super models, I doff my toy truck and say, 'That's a pickup. Wanna truck?' Get it?"

Barber: "Yes, sir."

Godzilla: "Or sometimes I feel frisky and ask 'em, 'Ever experience a fender bender?'"

Barber: "That reminds me of a joke. Wanna hear it?"

Godzilla: "What's a joke?"

Earrings for icy despots with expressway haircuts.

hat for humorless human tumors
#

de rigueur for pickup artists

Tony and I never wore speed limit signs, pickup trucks, or had expressway haircuts. Because we were goof-offs. Authentic goof-offs appreciate the middle ground, but understand it’s not in the middle. Goof-offs laugh at w-a-y over 51% of life, because most of our daily concerns really don’t matter a damn in the long run.

Well, back to the photo booth, a wonderful relic from the 20^th century. Four pictures for 25 cents. That day, we voted ourselves #1 on Chrysler's Most Wanted List because we were quitters who never quit. Here's how it began.

First, Tony sort of stopped one day. We drove to the plant where he succumbed to common sense. He declared, "Thefuhguh carguhfuh nuhsuh nuhfuhway duh!"

I countered, "Whuhthuhfuhbruh? Nuhsuh! Huh?"

He dropped me off. Entranced by the siren call of the assembly line, I reported for work. Think H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. The employees were the Eloi. Chrysler management? The Morlocks (rhymes with warlocks).

Dodge Main - afternoon shift begins at sundown

"Get your asses in here!"

Toward the end of the shift on that warm, June night, a sweaty Eloi toiling near me appeared antsy. To be fair, many Eloi at Dodge Main arrived at this existential crossroad, wondering, "Is today the day my brain implodes from skull-grinding drudgery?"

Inevitably, the follow-up, two-part question arose. "Shall I create Chrysler cars today? Or create Chrysler chaos for stress-reduction purposes?"

My Eloi colleague espied a wood pallet on the floor, reconfigured it at high-velocity against a cinder block wall, and turned it into kindling wood. Using one of the loose boards as a baseball bat, Babe Ruth began smashing out the windows while speaking in tongues. These were ancient stained-glass windows, reminiscent of the Notre Dame Cathedral, tattooed with a Halloween hue of orange-and-black grime. Here, every day was Halloween.

No, wait. Here, every night was Devil's Night.

STOP

SPOT QUIZ: Stained glass windows. Below are two pictures. One is the beloved Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The other is Saint Chrysler Cathedral in Detroit, where you genuflect from sheer exhaustion. The workers, trapped inside on a Saturday night, can relate to lovelorn Quasimodo (as the world outside parties its ass off).

Another shitty Saturday night!

Imagine Quasimodo kneeling by the stained glass windows on the eighth floor, gazing down at the nocturnal city, and crying, "Sanctuary! Sanctuary!"

Anyway, you have 30 minutes to decide which window is which. Go!

Hmm...an auto plant?

Notre-Dame de Paris?

Tick...tick...tick...time's up.

PROCEED

Broken glass flew like shrapnel as the Eloi punched out the windows (affordable air conditioning for the proles) one by one (see above picture). Twenty windows later, the Morlock foreman appeared and admonished, "Tut-tut." Soon I exited the building. My ride awaited on the street by the gate.

Tony, lying on the hood of his parked car, his back against the front windshield, drinking a Stroh's (rhymes with blows) beer under a streetlamp, asked, "How's yer day, Eloi?"

Tony (Eloi escapee) ensconced in his time machine.

For the record, I lasted one day longer than Tony. We drove away and never returned. Still, our phone kept jingling for a while.

In today’s world, it's not about what you achieve, but how you achieve it. The key is to earn your way to the top by cutting corners, by spraying mace and swinging a medieval spiked club. Or, in our case, by thumbing on the interstate instead of showing up at work. Thus becoming...

Chrysler's Most Wanted

Ever see this cheesy quote? “To reach the top you don't have to climb up to the top. Don't let the summits determine your altitude; let the height you like be your summit!”

Translation: stoop to the lowest common denominator, the low-hanging fruit. Ideally, grab the rotten apples on the ground.

Or simply go to a photo booth and bubble up to the top.

Here's a brief rundown of three of four photos. Eloi x 3. If we were in a drugstore that day, we were drugstore desperados. Or bus depot desperados. Or simply...duh duh duh desperados.

mugshots

Picture #1: I asked Tony, “Yo, goomba, ya think Chrysler's gonna catch us?”

Picture #2: Tony, moist-eyed, communicated in sign language. The chance of our getting caught? He indicated one percent.

Picture #3: Overwhelmed with relief, I smooched the camera’s lens.

Picture #4: The bottom photo is a bit grainy. But as you can see, it’s…

Jeepers! Wait! The surprise visitor will not be revealed…yet. Let’s roll back.

* * *

Filth, Madness, Mayhem, Murder
and a
Literary Critic
on the Assembly Line

Dodge Main

(rhymes with pain, slain, dog chain, choke chain, brain drain, bloodstain)

Once upon a time, I toiled on the afternoon shift at Chrysler’s infamous Dodge Main. Happy hours spanned 5:30 pm to 3:00 am, the knight shift, at The Dodge Den of Horrors, a massive dungeon on Detroit’s east side. The auto assembly plant was the size of the Roman Colosseum, albeit slightly older and more decrepit. Both buildings shared an element of danger. Dodge Main had the combined vibe of a crime scene, hospital ER and a funeral home. The plant reportedly began as a bicycle factory in the 1890s, then expanded, brick by grungy brick, into one of the largest car factories in the world.

Employees of Dodge Main (Dodge Mainiacs), blue-collar gladiators with a sack lunch, made a death march into the building each workday. For the next nine numbing hours, day or night shift, we were armed with, say, a monkey wrench or sandpaper, and compelled to fight to the death against an unending stream of auto bodies on the assembly line. Sand the car, paint the car, upholster the car, club the car, beat the car, strangle the car.

Chrysler is pronounced cry + slur. Homonym?

Dodge Main is pronounced as it looks. Two ho-hum words. But the key is context. Note how the name is used in this cryptic sentence. "Today I watched my final sunset from the edge of the rooftop of Dodge Main." Each time you read that sentence, its mystery deepens. It's as if...well...oh, never mind.

True story. Back in the day, a local TV station reported that the plant had the highest homicide rate of any factory in the state of Michigan (and possibly in the U.S.). In a sense, Dodge Main crushed the competition. Here’s an excerpt from a PhD dissertation I found online. The author wrote a book called, Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry.

* * *

“If You Want Blood”:

Violence at Work in the North American Auto Industry, 1960-1980

by Jeremy Milloy

In July 1970, Newsweek published an article titled “Violence in the Factories,” featuring a report from Chrysler’s Dodge Main plant in Detroit:

“…a grimy, 59-year-old pile of red brick and concrete harboring 9,000 of the most frightened, angry workers in America. The work force is a volatile mixture of Poles, blacks, and southern whites and, to hear some of them tell it, the man who doesn’t pack a gun, a knife, or a length of pipe with his lunch break sandwich is either a fool or suicidal.”

The article went on to quote a lurid tale from a United Automobile Workers (UAW) official about a “racial throat-cutting” in the plant’s parking lot, before discussing violence in other factories around America, including household names like Westinghouse, McDonnell Douglas, and Lockheed. One security chief at a Midwest plant warned: “Let’s face it. We have armed conflict – guerilla warfare in this country. I think that armed invasion of the plants is entirely possible.” This time, Newsweek identified racial conflict, in-plant radicalism and inter-union fights, drugs, street crime, and working conditions, the “car-a-minute monotony of the assembly line or the hellish heat of tending a blast furnace,” as the culprits. Clearly, workplace violence was around long before the early 1990s.

In the early 1970s, Newsweek was not the only national news source reporting on violence in Detroit’s Chrysler factories. That same July, while the Newsweek warning of America’s violent factories was still on newsstands, James Johnson, a black autoworker at a Detroit Chrysler plant, shot and killed two supervisors and a coworker after being suspended from his job. The shootings and subsequent trial made national headlines. The racism, violence, and unsafe conditions that Johnson’s lawyers argued precipitated his massacre were described in Time under the headline: “Hell in the Factory.”

* * *

Whew.

Every Thursday, payday, according to the TV newscast, one of three employees snuck a handgun into work. The guards at the gate never checked any of us for hidden weapons as we entered the plant. But they’d occasionally check random lunch buckets at shift’s end, in case, ya know, we were borrowing car parts.

Picture it.

Guard: “Hey yooze! Wuzzat in yer lunch bucket? Zatta thermos…or an earth-shaking 425-horsepower 426 HEMI® engine, you squirrelly-ass muthafucka?”

8-cylinder bologna sandwich?
Maybe.
Ham on rye with a side order of radiator?
Maybe.

Employee: “Holy smokes! How’d that 400-pound engine end up in my lunch pail next to my half-eaten bologna sandwich, three hits of speed and a pint of Crown Royal?”

Guard: “This here is called 'management displeasure.' We’re gonna write you up.”

Employee: “Guy in the lunch area, name's Frankie—everyone calls the dude 'Frankiestein'—squats at my picnic table and says, ‘Wanna carburetor?’ And I’m like, ‘Fer sure.’ So he hands it to me. How’s I t'know it was stuck to a big-block glory?”

Imagine a V-8 engine falling out of your paper lunch bag?

Spider-Man - 51% chance of reaching retirement alive?

The retirement plan was called 30 and Out. Work 30 years. Flee with glee. Do the math. If you managed to survive 7800+ workdays, and retired in one piece and not in a body cast or a body bag, it meant you were Spider-Man. Because you clearly spent the last three decades swinging through the plant while dodging death threats, projectiles from broken skids (this plant wasn’t called ‘Dodge’ for nothing), and just sheer unabated boredom. Your shitty work gloves surely had built-in web shooters, allowing you to fire and swing from sticky webs. Or chains or rubber hoses. You’d shoot some web and climb the grimy walls and other grease & dirt-encrusted surfaces. You’d hang from the ceiling, upside down, and hassle the foreman, “Fuh kew, I’m on break! Go 'head...write me up, muhfuh!”

Carbon emissions? Climate change? No way!

I first met Anthony Fortunato Crudo at the Main. Mr. Crudo noticed a misfit across the grimy floor doing the most perverted thing imaginable—reading a paperback amid all the crunching noise, hellish heat, polluted air, and empty car bodies crawling along the assembly line at the rate of 45 per hour. Here, you repeated the same task every 80 seconds or less, for nine hours, until your brains oozed through your ears. Unless a strike was imminent. Presto! Then the line magically sped up to 60 per hour, so Chrysler could stockpile cars to ride out the strike.

So Tony waltzed up, (a fellow pervert holding a book), and ventured, “What’cha readin'?”

Like, what? I'm gonna let myself get sucker-punched by that inquiry? Be. Serious.

When meeting someone for the first time, socialites suggest that one be blunt, slightly controversial, and completely honest. I'm all in on those triple tips.

I replied, “I’m perusing one of the towering giants of 20^th century literature. What else would I be reading inside this shit-hole?"

Tony stepped back in awe. “You mean, ‘Autoeroticism’ by Dr. Henry Ford? His pioneering work on Mustang’s Super Commando Libido 440 V-8, a hairy-looking beast that sported 22 carburetors smothering the block, and 440 cubic inches of otherworldly libidinal drive?”

"Yep."

A friendship was sparked. We discovered that we shared something in common, literary escape from brain-busting boredom. Also, we sensed self-preservation through teamwork, particularly in the dark parking lot at 3:00 a.m. on payday.

Dante's 10th Circle of Hello

[Sidebar: The Dodge Main parking lot was nicknamed, "Dante's 10th Circle of Hello" (sic). Why? It was a hellhole where, sooner or later, you'd hear a chilly voice behind your neck, whispering, "Hello."]

Dodge Main's parking lot attendants

I still recall the book I was reading that night. An informally dressed Eloi colleague sat down on the bench beside us. Like many of my Eloi compatriots, he was a fellow from the Middle East, Yemen, working at Dodge Main for several years or so, saving money before he’d return home. My paperback was Herman Hesse’s novel, Steppenwolf. The illustration on the cover featured a woman wearing a backless dress. My colleague turned to me, and said something like, “I know that’s…about what...it's about.”

Wait. No joke. This was the paperback's front cover.

hubba hubba?

“Yeah?” I waited. I knew this was gonna be good. My discerning colleague didn’t disappoint.

He shifted into sign language with both hands, his eyes agleam. He extended his left index finger, inserted it into his clenched right hand, and moved it like a piston. In, out, in, out, in, out. I sensed an automotive metaphor in sync with our surrounds. A carnal CliffsNotes. Without having read the book, he reviewed the book. A literary intuitionist. His grin was infectious. It'd take a heart of stone not to respond in kind.

Hands down, the most memorable book review I’ve ever read, heard or witnessed. In a single, deft gesture, he transformed Herman Hesse, Nobel Laureate, into Hugh Hefner, a porn peddler. Any critic can scribble a book review. New York Times Book Review? Yawn, ho hum. But to perform a book review at midnight amid, say, spot welders and seat installers on the assembly line?

Literati, take note.

“I’m speechless,” I told my Yemeni colleague. I turned to Tony. “It's like we time-traveled to Paris in the 1920s. We're part of the Lost Generation, surrounded by glamorous critics, socialites and car painters.”

"This is Dodge Main," Tony clarified. "We're the Exhaust Generation."

(Thus far, this blog entry has mentioned three people who seem to share something in common. Harry Houdini, Herman Hesse, Hugh Hefner. Yet I can't pinpoint what it is.)

The next day I arrived at work with the expurgated edition. My apologies to Mr. Hesse.

pretentious porn?

And speaking of seat installers, here's one for the ages. What do time bombs and lunchtime have in common? At Dodge Main, a shitload.

The assembly line's format is simple. It begins with an empty shell of a car. The steel body is pulled along the line, across the floor and, through a large rectangular opening, down to the next floor. Along the way, parts are added, installed, checked, tightened. Seats, for instance. The back seat is inserted into the car and bolted down. Or glued, Scotch taped, stapled, or held together with clothespins and prayers.

Occasionally, a frisky employee would put, say, his egg salad sandwich or sloppy joe or meatball sub or fish sticks into the car, then install the back seat over it. About a week later, a salesman at a car dealership in Abilene, Kansas would smell something fishy inside the new car in the showroom, and know that a smart-ass, at a plant somewhere in the U.S., was laughing. Solution? Yank out the back seat and destroy the car? Or hang a little tree air freshener from the rearview mirror over the dash, knock 10% off the sticker price, and sell that goddamn buggy a.s.a.p.

Imagine sitting on this during a two-week car trip.

Question: What do you call six meatball submarine sandwiches smothered with sauce and cheese under a car seat?

Answer: The Perfect Crime.

Because you never get caught.

Remember this fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, about a young woman whose royal identity is established by a test of her sensitivity?

The Princess & the Pea

Dodge Main's contribution to world-class children's literature? This.

The Princess & the Lobster

In this version, the Princess sits on the backseat, while traveling 1,000 miles to visit her royal brother who's doing time in Kansas at the El Dorado Correctional Facility for shoplifting, littering, and third degree assault. Each time the brand new Dodge Charger hits a pothole, she exclaims, "Methinks I'm perched on a claw?"

"Nah," the chauffeur says, "ya probably got hemorrhoids."

The princess declares, "Driver. Beneath me, I sense a large, greasy pepperoni pizza served on a heated hubcap, ten squished hot dogs smothered in blue cheese, eight smashed pork tacos, godawful corn dogs, beef jerky for Christ's sake, a busted carton of curdled buttermilk, and a bag of bologna-flavored potato chips." She gasps. "In addition, something is moving inside the seat!"

The lobster, still alive, emerges between the cushions of the back seat, a meatball clenched in each claw.

* * *

a Brief History of

AutoEroticism

Disgruntled, cruciform, half-nude Eloi (Tony) on the run in Kansas.

"Chrysler! Come an' get me...hahahahaha!"

Me, I don't recall my first assignment at Dodge Main, thank God, although the word "lobotomy" (rhymes with "auto body") comes to mind.

Tony's first job at Dodge Main? QA. Quality Assurance. He lovingly recalls:

"I'd look for dents and dings in the raw steel shell of the car." [As he continues his description, note the lush, Nabokovian tone.] "I'd use a soft glove to feel the body, circle dents and X dings with a large pen [yoo-hoo, paging Dr. Freud]. The station before mine was a body-work crew who'd attempt to fix dents and dings before my inspection. Needless to say, they couldn't keep up. I would tally every mark I made."

What Tony didn't understand? His job was not to do his job because he could lose his job.

Tony: "So one day this foreman walks up, carrying a colorful bong, and asked if I wanted a hit. I was cool, you know, but I wasn't prepared for that. Silly me, with works on the floor everywhere, and junkies trucking cars on dollies to different lines."

Jeepers, someone dropped a weird little squirt gun.

[TIP: If you're gonna shoot up at Dodge Main, hit the men's room. What better setting to hit up and nod off than a toilet stall with a lopsided door that almost closes and ensures semi-privacy. In the meantime, out on the floor, a relief man will take your place on the line, until you shake it off and stagger out of the can.]

Tony: "I declined the bong. A good effort on the foreman's part to make things cool with his crew. In any case, a while later (not sure if it was the same day or another day) a couple of the body crew guys came up to me. They were wearing their colors."

automotive colleague,
8-cylinder soulmate

[SIDEBAR: At Dodge Main, costumes were de rigeuer. You could arrive dressed as a black-hooded executioner. As previously noted, every day was Halloween.]

Me: The bikers working nearby belonged to a gang called "The Flying Diamonds." One might reasonably ask: What's 'flying' and 'diamond' gotta do with a brain blasting, grease-pit hellhole? For that answer, go see the dude passed out in the men's room with the squirt gun.

Tony: "While I can't quote what they said verbatim, it came down to: 'Listen mothafucka. If you don't go easy on the tally, we're gonna fuck you up in the parkin' lot after work.'"

Me: Tony had a choice. Defer to the Diamonds or watch his luxurious industrial lifestyle go south. Here's my goomba, in his own words.

Tony: "While I would like to tell the story that I wasn't gonna be threatened, I was in fact terrified. My knees began shaking and I didn't want them to see that, so I started pacing around. The calculus I did was this: if I do what they want, I’ll be their bitch who’ll never live it down and probably never be left alone...for entertainment, if nothing else. So what can I do? Well...CRAZY, nobody wants to fuck with crazy. So I went crazy.

"Gotta piece motherfuckers an' I will shoot any motherfucker who comes near me."

Me: Where is the Labor Relations Board when you need them most?

Me: Also, once you announce that you have ballistic enhancements access, you are claiming membership to the one-out-of-three elite at Dodge Main, which is not, you know, a s-t-r-e-t-c-h. Numerically speaking.

Dodge Main Fraternity ID Card

Back to Tony: "I picked up something, I don't recall what, and slammed the fender of the car passing by, then the hood, then the door."

Me, interrupting: Note how Tony has now done damage to the very car he was hired to inspect for damages. Ironic, no? Did Tony reach for his pen and circle the ding he just inflicted on the car? Perhaps not.

Back to Tony: "I jumped onto the hood and said if you wanna get me, do it now, or something to that effect. I was hauled into a foreman's office. And there was my foreman, my general foreman, the production foreman, and someone from upper management. I was interrogated, sure I was going to be fired and not really unhappy at the prospect. But no, they asked me if I wanted to be a foreman. Long pause. 'I'm not crazy,' I said. They sent me back to my station."

Deranged biker? Heck no.

Quality Assurance nitpicker

(skull mask optional)

Going forward, the Flying Diamonds flew out of Tony's life. And soon the autoeroticist crossed paths with the Herman Hesse porn addict. Ah, kismet. Krysler kismet krossroads: bikers, Nobel Laureate, death threats, Siddartha, muscle cars, Buddhist enlightenment, etc.

Kismet, indeed. Tony and I soon became co-workers in the paint booth. Incentive? We earned (yearned for) an extra 50 cents per hour. Why the stratospheric hike in the hourly wage? Because we had to cling-wrap ourselves in sweaty nylon jumpsuits, tourniquet our heads with rags, apply goggles or maybe a snorkel mask, and breathe toxic paint spray. A night in the booth meant we each shaved off two weeks from our life expectancy. Yo...so...whuh? Man up, you chickenshits. Lose two weeks, but earn $4.50 per a measly 3600 seconds of your life x 9 each day. With the extra big bucks, we could better invest in our retirement fund. Get our mind off the fact that...well, you get the pic. And so what if each morning we woke with glued eyelids, which we peeled open with our fingertips. And when we blew our nose, the facial tissue blackened. Hey, don't mean a thang. Focus on the extra coin. Almost an additional penny per minute. Next stop: The Prole Promised Land.

Dr. Lincoln, pulmonologist, on the dark Kleenex hoax:

"No need to worry."

* * *

Sidebar: Following respiratory complaints from paint-booth tunnel rats, a disinformation campaign emerged, allegedly from the Chrysler deep-state, claiming the booth had been awarded a 5-star rating from The Sierra Club. Message: Black snot is a total hoax. According to whispers, this covert Chrysler cabal was nicknamed The Ku Klux Kleenex Krew.

* * *

The paint booth resembled a car wash tunnel trapped inside an angry-ass black hole in outer space. At Dodge Main, a black hole is the region of the assembly line exhibiting gravitational acceleration so strong that nothing -- no cars, no trucks, no tanks, no jumbo jets, no ocean liners, no screaming employees -- can escape from its suction. The paint booth will suck your hopes and dreams. Vacuum your future. Chew your belief in a supreme being supervising the universe. The booth could eat the entire city of Detroit, belch, and then gulp all of North America. The entire Western Hemisphere could vanish into the Dodge Main paint booth. Such was the power of the booth.

The booth had two functions. The steel husk of a car, pulled along the line, entered the booth. Painters stood on each side of the line. A handwritten paper sign inside the car had a color code. If you saw, say, O1, you grabbed the hose marked O1, and sprayed your side of the car with orange paint the color of teeth untouched by a toothbrush in a decade. Or S1, the silvery color of a gelatinous blobfish. The car continued into the bake booth, a hellhole where the paint was baked on. And so on. Car after unending car.

auto alimentary canal

(paint booth)

While Tony and I, artistes extraordinaire, showered cars inside the paint booth with our coded hoses, we were joined by Crazy Horse (derivation of nickname unknown), a fellow artiste with a frisky bladder, who performed (or perfumed) with an unconventional hose.

True story? Alas, yes. But let's pause.

* * *

A Brief, Raggedy-Ass History of

Men as Gargoyles

First, this.

In a sense, this blog is sexist. It absolutely champions sexism characterized by or showing prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, totally against men, on the basis of boorishness and dumbassery. Why?

Start here: According to Google University, in the United States in 2015, women made up 10.4% of the incarcerated population in adult prisons and jails.

Duh? Do the math. Hmm...89.6% of inmates are...hmm...lemme see...hmm?

Let's proceed.

* * *

After all these years, I still vividly recall Crazy Horse. He was unforgettable...for all the wrong reasons. Why?

First: Crazy Horse at Chrysler had zero to do with the Lakota war leader of the Oglala band in the 19th century. Chrysler's Crazy Horse was, well, crazy. His signature move was to publicly urinate, daily, just before 5:30 p.m., on the fourth-floor elevator doors by the paint booth. Why? Don't know. But here's a clue. That's when the employees, three floors below, would be entering the freight elevator on the ground floor before the afternoon shift (5:30 - 3:00 a.m.).

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

Urine + gravity. Target? Motive? You figure it out. Here's a hint: his nickname wasn't Saint Francis of Assisi or the 15th Dalai Lama.

Each afternoon, Tony and I would suit up in our head-to-toe garb and watch Mr. Horse piss on the elevator doors. Day after day. Tony and I would face each other and shrug. Day after brain-grinding day.

Step #1: open umbrella. Step #2: enter elevator.

I mention this because, in the end, an employee can, and often will, adapt to occupational circumstances due to economic necessity. We humans are very adaptable. We expand our paradigms of the normal. All the time. Which is how Tony and I ended up in the paint booth, wrapped in protective clothing, looking like this:

"Yo, Tony...shit man...we be the two luckiest freakin' dudes!"

Then the weird-o-meter dialed up.

Crazy Horse was the Jackson Pollock of Dodge Main. He was renown for his technique of splashing liquid onto a moving, vertical surface, enabling him to view and paint his steel canvases from multiple angles. He called it “motion painting,” because the metal canvas was never static.

No shit. He'd stand inside the paint booth, occasionally unzip his pants, and squirt the side of a freshly painted car. The car would roll inside the bake booth, baking the wet paint and piss. The car would emerge on the other end, the Chrysler birth canal, making its artistic debut, its door and quarter panel tattooed with an abstract expressionistic masterpiece.

"Plymouth Fury door"

by Crazy Horse

(automotive neo-urinary expressionism)

A flurry of furious colors, no? His technique? Grab 3 or 4 paint hoses and let loose, while pissing. Presto: a mobile masterpiece in 60 seconds. Priceless art. Destined to cause sticker shock next week at the car dealership.

Sadly, the foreman overlooked the creativity, rerouting every masterpiece by pulling the steel shell off the line. Yet Crazy Horse was never caught or confronted, and would continue to wag the weasel every now and then.

* * *

At any rate, this world of freight elevators, umbrellas and Jackson Pollock knock-offs was grinding us down. To be honest, co-workers dressed like a nun became tedious. At first it was vaguely amusing. Later we discovered that every nun was hiding stolen auto parts inside their baggy habit. Whenever Tony and I passed a nun inside the lunch area, we'd say in unison, "Grand Theft Auto Parts." If your bewhiskered colleague introduced himself as, say, Sister Marie Bonaventure, assume the worst. Assume this was Sister Marie Radiator.

auto parts entrepreneur

Imagine walking around with this hidden in your underpants.

Move over Viagra.
Put 8-cylinders in your shorts.

As previously noted, one summer day Tony quit. On the following day I quit. These two pictures best illustrate our transition from Factory Rats to Factory Fugitives:

from this:

to this:

two road dogs on the run

While hightailing it through Kansas with some fellow nomads, this picture was taken. As you can see, the scenery was so breathtaking that we had to slam on the brakes and savor God's creation. The sky resembled cigar smoke, and the dirt was the color of cow dung spread from here to eternity. Note the careful composition of the photo, a Venn diagram of nature, humanity, and vehicles that would never be targeted for auto theft.

2 interstate fugitives spotted in Kansas

Although the above looks like Shangri-La, lean forward, look closely. Ignore the unidentified, freelance irrigation specialist on far left, and focus on the shadow at center/bottom. That's not a tree stump or a fire hydrant. Brace yourself. That's...

...the shadowy dude in bottom photo.

Much later, we realized that the Chrysler hitman had tracked us into Kansas, and later watched us inside the photo booth in Colorado. Closing in, he was waiting to strike. But that's getting ahead of things.

After we arrived in Colorado, we drifted over to Colorado Springs. Strapped for cash, we became curbside florists and mastered the art of high-speed marketing. Customers would slam on their brakes and purchase roses through the driver's window.

from factory rat to fugitive florist

Tony, manning the office phone,

kept our supply chain moving.

This money-magnet enterprise was destined for The Fortune 500. We were "The Fleurgitives." Until Tony, impervious to U.S. Highway System protocols, got popped for Christonlyknowswhat. See entry for violation.

CRIME: Pedestrian disregarded traffic control device

This brazen act of criminal negligence led to the Colorado State Patrol forcing us (at gunpoint) to reprioritize our resource expenditures amassed from our flower sales commissions and...

...buy bus tickets, blow town, and exit Colorado.

Next stop: Arizona.

We soon hit the Grand Canyon (deeper than the Parisian sewers in Les Miserables) and spent the night in our sleeping bags on the ground under the stars, the only tentless campers at a campground.

[That night, Tony woke with the munchies and stole someone's food in an aluminum cooler. Soon a park ranger, Inspector Javert, chased Tony down to the bottom of the Canyon. The two slogged along the muddy Colorado River. Javert kept yelling, "Stop thief, stop!"]

Next day, we hitched a ride on the back of a flatbed truck that had dumped off a load of watermelons. We landed in Phoenix a few hours later under a blistering sun, reportedly during the region's worst drought in 114 years. Each day bounced between 112 and 118 degrees. Fortunately, we met two young women at a hippie cowboy bar (red beer? tomato juice & beer?) shortly after we arrived, and they invited us to "camp on their apartment's living room floor."

We did.

Looking back, I think they sensed we were harmless goof-offs, two dudes from Detroit, and so we hung out. While they reported to their jobs during the day, Tony and I would explore Phoenix, which did not resemble Detroit. The difference? Well, think Waylon Jennings vs. Stevie Wonder. Red beer vs. Stroh's Beer. Better yet, red beer vs. a Sneaky Pete (beer & cheap wine sloshed together and consumed while sitting on a stoop and watching the world go by). No, wait. Red beer vs. a Schlitz "Tall Boy," which can only be consumed while dancing solo down the sidewalk and waving at the neighbors.

Slap on your dancing shoes.

Pop the tab.

You are now "Tall Boy" singing a sidewalk serenade.

Phoenix showed no sign of Tall Boy choreography. Me & Tony scoured the simmering streets. The city was a T-Boy free zone. Nor did we spot any Jackson Pollocks painted on cars. That's when we knew we were light years from home.

After a week or so, we thanked our hosts and decamped from their living room floor (a/k/a the Sheraton Shag Rug or Daze Inn or maybe Motel 5.9). If not for their generosity, we'd have crashed at Gravelodge, the biggest, free hotel chain in the world, with millions of roadside locations. And so we headed back to Detroit.

But not before we experienced the most hallucinatory ride of the trip. We were somewhere on the edge of Phoenix, early afternoon, thumbing on the side of the highway, when this buggy appeared in the desert and pulled over.

a red Cadillac convertible

We couldn't believe our good luck. It was like a desert mirage where you think you see water. Except we saw a swimming pool with wheels where we could stand on top of the front windshield, a virtual diving board, and dive into the deep end of the back seat. Instead of seatbelts there'd be life jackets. And the sunglassed driver would be the lifeguard. And...

Wait, who was the driver?

This...this is a mirage.

This shit never happens in real life.

Let's return to reality. Uh...the frat boy on the right? That was our driver. Add a few pounds, a few years. And add a cold cooler of beer in the front seat plus a few pharmaceutical snacks.

"Ahoy! I'm Captain Blue Shorts.

Ya ready to party hardy?"

LEGENDARY TIDBIT: "The Flying Dutchman." (1) a legendary Dutch mariner condemned to sail the seas until Judgment Day. (2) a spectral ship that according to legend haunts the seas.

Ready?

Arizona's "Flying Red Dutchman." (1) a legendary sand sailor condemned to cruise the desert until he matures. (2) a spectral red Cadillac convertible that according to legend haunts the sands.

TRAVEL TIP: When Captain Blue Shorts appears in the desert while wearing a yacht cap, ensconced at the helm of the Flying Red Dutchman that's freighted with beer and drugs, do not rule out an imminent cosmic transfer to Parts Unknown.

The first tip-off was the cooler of suds in the front seat. Really? We were getting a ride in a Caddy 'vert, a freakin' keg party on wheels? And when Captain Blue Shorts (the Yachtsman) popped open the glove box, stuffed with bags of "oregano" and "Flintstones Chewable Multivitamins," and said, "Help yourself!" It was like...Really? Free Flintstones vitamins? REALLY? Soon we were sucking down beers and watching the saguaro cacti go by.

desert telephone poles

Somewhere along the highway we left Earth-Prime and crossed into Earth-2. The Yachtsman spotted a roadside thumber and pulled over. The desert hermit, "Charlie," climbed into the back seat of the Flying Red Dutchman and settled in. He appeared...RELAXED. He spoke Earth-2 English whose alphabet, figuratively speaking, prioritized three letters. Guess which three? Hint: see Charlie's hat. Curiously, Earth-2 English sounds like Esperanto if spoken by a kangaroo.

alias "Charlie"

And thus we were a family of four, touring the U.S.A. from the F.R.D. (Flying Red Dutchman).

Spot quiz. Pattern recognition buffs. Do you detect a cosmic pattern?

U.S.A.

F.R.D.

L.S.D.

(WTF?)

What's it mean? This:

S.O.S.

I, sitting aside "Charlie" in the back, sent out a telepathic S.O.S. The backseat was now Earth-3. Tony, red-eyed and riding shotgun in Earth-2, turned to me while holding up a bag of primo oregano. His telepathic response: Can-you-buh-leeve-this-shit? The highway, at the moment, had no sign of police from Earth-1. This leg of the trip had become...

An intergalactic, interdimensional traffic jam on Arizona's Interstate 17

Odd, no? Tony and I went from The Time Machine (Dodge Main) to The War of the Worlds (Arizona). Anyone who has ever spent time hitchhiking, however, understands that each ride is a surprise package, starting when you open the car door. You may get Winnie the Pooh behind the wheel. You may get Dracula. In our case, H.G. Wells had been our tour guide for a year.

(12/29/20 - This sordid peek into the virtual underpants of Chrysler Corporation's Dodge Main has me so shaken I am teetering toward my 17th century fainting couch which is 3 stumble-steps removed from my desk. I shall return to this hideous tell-all soon. After I take my medication, and collapse screaming until I pass out.

Nookie with Lucifer?

2019-08-11T10:19:00.000-07:00

Sex with Satan?

Are you in bed with Beelzebub?

Her sleep mask was a warning: sleep with one eye open!

Years ago, Twyla Girdlestone, 29, of Saginaw Michigan, woke to the serene sound of a flushing toilet. All was well in the world. She pictured her new boyfriend, Aldrich, taking a whiz. Next she heard what sounded like a Gregorian chant coming from the kitchen. She raised herself on one elbow, slipped off her silk sleep mask, and checked the clock radio. 3:32 a.m. Twyla looked around in the dark, reached over, and turned on the bedside lamp. What happened next spiked her blood pressure, and changed her life.

The bed sheet and blanket had been turned back on Aldrich's side of the bed. Looking down, Twyla was perplexed when she saw...

STOP

Recently, Twyla purchased a top-quality mattress made of extra-plush foams and fibers to create comfort layers designed to cradle a customer's body and relieve pressure. Who wouldn't wanna make whoopee on that?

Babies wet the bed; adults dent the bed; life goes on.

NOTE: Body impression, often referred to as body signature, is where the mattress has a slight indentation where one lies at night, on the surface.

CONTINUE

Within seconds Twyla's confusion turned into terror. An impression was stamped on the bed, as vivid as a footprint in mud. It was a human profile of Aldrich...with anatomical accessories. The mattress suggested a forked tail attached to Aldrich's rump, horns atop his noggin, and cloven hooves for tootsies. Twyla vibrated with fear, peeling back the blanket. Oh...My...God! She beheld winged imprints tattooed onto the fitted sheet, as if leathery membranes had sprouted out of Aldrich's back.

Imagine the love of your life getting up to take a leak and you spot this on the futon. Honey, y'all gotta jumbo prob.

DEFCON 1 in the dating world

A mirror never reflects a vampire [see New England Journal of Medicine, October 31, "Reflections on the Unreflected: Myth, Monster, Mirror"]. So, too, only an extra-plush foam mattress can reveal a devil's invisible body parts, which remain otherwise unseen by the human eye.

How could Twyla have been so blind? Although Aldrich Bronwyn Snootfield IV was totally worthless, at least he wasn't wanted by the FBI or INTERPOL. Twyla had more than a decade of dating experience under her belt. She knew that the secret to dating was to drop your standards to approximately ten miles below sea level. Even at that depth, within the Earth's crust, it would still filter out 98% of single men, denizens of the ultimate man cave of dense rock, the Earth's mantle. So Twyla expected to meet zeroes like Aldrich. Blowhards with fancy-ass names, dullards not devils.

warning sign: your guardian angel's handprint

Today's world is already a minefield of letdowns and dashed hopes. Now women had to ask themselves, "For fucksake, am I dating a gargoyle?" Is my guardian angel appearing in the middle of the night, leaning on the mattress with one hand, whispering into my ear, "JFC, girl! You're lying in the sack with a sack of..." Shhhhh. Don't make a sound. Or Mr. Wonderful will hear you.

Twyla stared at the mattress and recalled her mother's recent warning. "Never trust a man who calls himself Aldrich, not Al. Edward, not Eddie. Richard, not Dick. And, of course, Gerald, not Gerkoff." Formal first-name users, according to Mrs. Bertha Girdlestone, were pretentious blowbags who should be thrown screaming from helicopters into the shark-infested waters of the Bermuda Triangle.

Meanwhile...

The clock changed to 3:33 a.m. Twyla glanced at the numbers, mentally doubled them, and thought: 6:66. At that moment Aldrich slithered into the bedroom in his tighty-whities, humming a Gregorian chant while doing pop & lock arm moves. He was either dancing or experiencing a charley horse in both legs while being tasered during a 10.0 earthquake. Twyla Girdlestone would soon be officially reported missing, and never seen again.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Is Satan your main squeeze? Seriously, is your boyfriend...Beelzebub?

If you paused for even a nanosecond while reading the above, you may have an issue. You may be dating a demon.

It's Saturday night. What shall I wear? An asbestos suit.

(Meet hellacious men on America's #1 online dating site, Asbestos.com.)

You may ask: "How the Hades would I know? Is he my infantile, flavorless, totally self-absorbed boyfriend...or boy-fiend? Holy smokes, I dunno!"

Thwart sulfur halitosis attack? No prob.

Although millions of men are soulless sizzleshits in polo shirts, the good news is that less than 24% are actually possessed by Lucifer. Most men collapse with beer on their breath and lies on their lips. But what if you kissed your snoring boyfriend, supine next to the toilet bowl, his feet in the hallway, his pants puddled around his ankles, and discovered that his breath reeked of sulfur? Might that give you pause? Might you say: "Oh Passed-Out Prince of Porcelain. Oh Ceramic Seer and Feudal Lord of the Floor. Oh Noble Earl of Saginaw, Michigan. Ye doth lie on the tiled floor, but doth ye lie to me?"

GPS satellite tracks shitty relationships

Women may wonder, "Where's this relationship headed?" GPS has 33 satellites littering the sky, one of which tracks relationships. Ask GPS. Say, "What's the coordinates on the location of this relationship? The latitude and longitude of love for the lovelorn...or I'd love to get my life back?" If GPS replies, "Dumpster fire, Category 5," consider yourself lucky. Pack your bags. Your life is on the upswing.

apparel for a break-up with Satan

Whereas if GPS says, "Turn left, turn right, welcome to Hell," don't fiddle with the thermostat. The heat you feel isn't greenhouse gas emissions, although a spiritual drought and a severe shitstorm is underway. So slip on an asbestos suit and scram.

PS: Whatever happened to Twyla Girdlestone? Who knows? However, years later this anonymous post appeared on a website for recovering incubus daters. The site's name? Ask Me if I Give a Sheet: Satin not Satan.

TG. Free at last.

TG? Twyla Girdlestone? Or..."Thank God, free at last!"

#1 in the Universe

2019-02-24T17:21:00.001-08:00

CEO

Cosmic Earthling Overlord

CEOWORLD magazine released its ranking of the most powerful people in the world. Topping the list is this power trio.

power trio

#1 Donald Trump (U.S.)

#2 Vladimir Putin (Russia)

#3 Xi Jinping (China)

A power trio is a rock-n-roll band with a guitar, bass and drums. Think Cream, Jimi Hendrix Experience, or Led Zep. The above trio frequently perform on the world's stage, but no one would describe any of them as a "song-and-dance man." Perhaps they play air guitar.

In November 2018, the world population was pegged at 7.7 billion. So the U.S. president beat out nearly 8 billion people for the top spot: Most Powerful Person in the World. But that description is misleading. It's like saying "Jeff Bezos (#6 on list) is solvent." Or Vladimir Putin -- a/k/a Vlad the Impaler -- stays in shape via defenestration aerobics (throwing critics through fifth-floor windows). Both descriptions are true, but limited. Calling someone the most powerful person in the world reveals a myopic imagination.

Consider this story from the New York Post (12/8/17).

Half of humans believe in alien life, study says

"Nearly half of Earthlings believe that we aren’t alone in the universe — and want to make contact with alien life, according to a new study..."

Yoo hoo!

Half equals 3.85 billion believers. Half also equals 3.85 billion nonbelievers. So nearly four billion people believe we are alone in the universe. There's a 50% chance they're right. If so, ipso facto, Donald Trump is the most powerful person in the universe.

President Pee Wee?

Anyone can run for president in America. What if, say, Pee Wee Herman ran and was elected by a disgruntled majority. He would be, in the eyes of nearly four billion people, hands down, the most powerful person in the universe. If you stood outside, anywhere in the world, and looked heavenward, you'd be a tiny dot in the unending Pee Wee cosmos. All would be within the domain of President Pee Wee, for zillions of light years in any direction.

Pee Wee Herman would be the most famous, most powerful person in all creation. He alone among almost eight billion people...would bubble up to the top. Why? Because 51% of the electorate was in a shitty mood on election day.

Mr. Universe? Not quite.

Next year, Vlad the Impaler could rise to the top slot. Imagine the most powerful dude in the universe spending a few minutes each day pitching ingrates through windows or squirting radioactive material on dissenters. The cosmos would be reduced to a thugocracy.

Alas, the Universe Championship isn't just a bodybuilding event. It's the culmination of 70,000,000 frisky voters (less than two percent of the global population), with vertical middle fingers, sending a shock wave across a gazillion galaxies.

Next time, vote as if the universe depends on it.

Collision, Collusion, Confusion

2018-12-19T15:49:00.000-08:00

from DARK HORSE to NIGHT MARE

(a tale of total terror)

Headlights whitened her rearview mirror that night, suggesting two small UFOs weaving side to side, speeding toward her car stopped at a traffic light. She was backlit in the front seat, frozen in light and shadows. In a nanosecond, she understood this was a game-changer on a lonely stretch of road. If the other driver didn't apply the...

The oncoming truck thundered into her trunk, hitting her Bernie for President 2016 bumper sticker, turning her car into a squeezebox on wheels. Barbara Wanderly saw the dashboard roaring toward her as she smashed face-first into the steering wheel, oblivious to the tornado of metal, vinyl and glass.

Time passed. Paramedics rushed the unconscious woman to the nearest hospital. It was after two a.m. on June 16, 2015 when Barbara, strapped to a gurney, rolled out of the ambulance under a starry sky. Comatose. Adrift in a netherworld.

Later that day, Donald Trump stepped off a golden escalator and officially announced his candidacy for the presidency.

Barbara remained in a coma, and was eventually transferred to a nursing home. Months blurred by; years were a rolling fog. Until one morning her eyes blinked open. She heard a vaguely familiar voice nearby. She felt a bed beneath her, and saw a large, strange room with beeping monitors and bedridden strangers.

“Hello?” she said. Her voice sounded faraway.

A teenage girl in a blue smock appeared above Barbara’s head.

Barbara remembered headlights. “What’s the…date?”

The wide-eyed nurse’s aide said, “April 1, 2019.”

After Barbara processed that, she managed a weak smile. “Who won? Hillary Clinton...or Jeb Bush?”

Confusion clouded the girl’s eyes. She leant back, pointed at a TV set suspended from the ceiling, the source of the familiar voice.

“Excuse me, excuse me!” The speaker's right hand moved in the air with the geometrical precision of a hummingbird. “No collusion! Fake news! That much I can tell you, believe me! No collusion!"

Barbara saw an afternoon press conference on the White House lawn. Reporters faced a president with orange hair combed in multiple directions. He was chattering about...a car accident? An automobile collusion? He denied colluding into a car full of...Russians. The police report was a hoax. "No collision, no collusion!" he said.

Barbara squinted—no, it can’t be—and recognized the new president. “Where am I?”

The girl said, “Fairfax Nursing Home.”

“I mean...country?”

“United States.”

Barbara felt a surreal jolt. Her hospital bed spun like a top. Was she awake, dreaming, vegetative?

She concluded: I'm in a parallel world.

Barbara Wanderly, vowing to swim back to consciousness in a couple of years for an update, sank into the safety of her netherworld.

Salvation Tip for Spiritual Dogs

2018-08-17T07:04:00.000-07:00

Ready? Set? Get your Pet...into Paradise

Is there room for pets in Paradise? Of course. Would you want to spend eternity without your pet? No way. Heaven would be a hell-hole without Snuffles the dog or Muffy the six-toed cat.

"So," you ask, "how can my pet get kicked upstairs to the Sweet Hereafter? Wishing it will happen won't make it so. I want a guarantee."

What follows is a visionary tip. Read it here first, at the ever educational Museum of Sudden Disappearances. This is a simple, screamingly obvious, one-step procedure. Follow it, and Fido gets a ticket to join the angels.

The key step is baptism. A baptized baby has a shot at heaven, unless the baby grows up to be, say, Whitey Bulger, or goes through life saying the world's stupidest four words, "You got a haircut." An unbaptized baby, who grows up to be a world-class philanthropist, is still out of luck. No baptismal certificate? No heaven for you, buddy boy, you're undocumented.

Pooches with proper papers
ride this escalator to Paradise.

The same applies to pets. Dogs and cats, once baptized, are eligible for Heaven. Unless they bite the mailman or crap on the carpet, which is a mortal sin, and may result in their heading in the wrong direction. In which case they'll spend eternity in Doggie Hell, tied to a post outside of Satan's Supermarket, stranded by the automatic sliding doors, facing the plate glass windows, whining, and wondering why their master refuses to exit the store after a million years.

Trixie last saw her master back in 992,084 B.C. Still waiting.

Satan's Supermarket is open 24/7 x eternity. Once dog owners grab a shopping cart and enter, they never come out again. This is what's in store for Fido if he craps on the carpet, and then pretends he didn't do it and dummies up with that look on his face that says, "I've been framed!" Next stop: Doggie Hell. And it's Fido's own damn fault. There'll be no leg-lifting on the Big Fire Hydrant in the Sky for him.

Bunnie & Clyde, pantry robbers,

paying the price in Doggie Hell.

Mr. Munchie peed on the rug, then blamed the mailman.

Now he's inmate #6789X at Hades for Hounds.

Let's move on to the nitty.

You ask: "How can my pet get baptized? Because I don't think my neighborhood church provides this service."

holy water font

Solution: buy a lawn sprinkler at the hardware store, and a whole lot of garden hose. You may have to hit several Home Depots to get enough hose. Set the sprinkler on your front lawn. Connect the extremely long hose to the sprinkler, and run the other end into the River Jordan. If Lourdes, France is closer to your shack, access that. Or simply have your parish priest come to your house and bless your water tank or water pipes.

Now you're ready to rock the sprinkler. Turn it on, and watch holy water spray the air in oscillating waves. Your job is done. Go inside, watch TV. Nature is about to take its spiritual course.

It's a hot summer day. Dogs do what dogs do. This:

"Wow, Scooter, this hits the spot! Arf arf!"

Then the news travels around the neighborhood (this is why the sprinkler must be located in the front, for maximum visibility, not the back yard). Pretty soon...

"Yo, Baxter and Toodles, this is grrrrrrrrreat!"

Baxter: "Don't hog all the holy water, Chuckie!"
Chuckie: "I ain't."
Toodles: "Are so."
Chuckie: "No way."

And then everyone is in on it.

From across the street, the McMutt family drops by. As you can see, Mrs. McMutt believes that getting spayed is a mortal sin. "Don't get spayed," she said, "get sprayed."

Catrina Scratchowski, the next-door neighbor, joins the party.

Even the neighborhood trash can inspector arrives.

What happens when our furry friends get blasted with holy water? You guessed it: Rapture. Check these photos: two neighborhood dogs ascending toward that Fire Hydrant in the Clouds. Within five minutes, as they rose like balloons, neither dog could be seen with the naked eye.

Scooter Adams (left) and Yo-Yo Schneider:

Enraptured

Fyodor Dogstoyevsky takes flight.

Charles Barkley waves bye-bye.

You ask, "What if the neighborhood pet refuses to run through the sprinkler?"

Answer: this is what happens when you dance with the devil.

Hell cat (for real)

Devil dog (oh, Hell yeah!)

No sprinklers for this little dude, and now he's payin' the price.

On the other hand, this guy (below) earned his wings. How? By never amputating the mailman's leg or doggedly sniffing people's zippers. Or breaking into the pantry, eating a two-pound bag of dry rice, getting diarrhea, redecorating the living room, and rendering the house into...well, an EPA-designated hazardous waste dump.

"My name's Sparky. I never made a mess. I knew how to hold it in...all day long!"

Finally, your holy water lawn sprinkler not only offers salvation, but signifies diversity. Which explains how this little nitwit got in on the action. His name is Gerald Jitters. Mr. Jitters is adjusting the water pressure prior to his baptism.

"I got every right to be here too," proclaimed Mr. Jitters.

Gerald Jitters demanded equal access to the holy water, which is guaranteed by the inscription on the Statue of Poochie. Gerald recited from memory:

Statue of Poochie
(on Belle Isle in the Detroit River)

"Gimme your tired, your poor pets, and your chewy toys. Your huddled squirrels yearning to breathe free in a tree or on a telephone pole. The wretched raccoons of your teeming garbage cans. Send these, the homeless hounds, tempest-tost kitties. I lift my hind leg beside the golden hydrant and shout, 'Life! Liberty! And Triple Flavor Kabobs!'"

BONUS: Within 60 feet of that sprinkler, all dead grass will rise from the dirt, like Lazarus. Lourdes meets lawn care.

America's #1 Cliche

2018-07-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

WARNING

Can this cliche be stopped?

Hospital ER's Overwhelmed by Verbal Tic Infection

Summer is here. You enjoy a walk in the woods. There's nothing like getting in touch with nature while wearing headphones (noise-canceling, killer cans the size of hubcaps), smoking designer weed nicknamed BrainBurst, while littering beer cans on the hiking trail and sending Zenlike texts to your friends, which cryptically say: K. As you know, that ticks them off.

Which brings to mind "ticks." Ewww. The woods are dangerous, filled with ticks and poison ivy. Perhaps a barefoot walk in your silk micro briefs with mesh ventilation wasn't so smart. At least the smoke from BrainBurst repels the mosquitoes and tsetse flies. Bravo: you had the sense to leave the other designer bud at home, the one called InstaComa. Let's face it, tripping on a dead tree stump crawling with maggots, then collapsing into a doob-induced, three-day coma in the middle of bear and rattlesnake country...isn't what Joni Mitchell had in mind when she sang Woodstock:

I'm going to camp out (pass out?) on the land
I'm going to try an' get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden

But you're nothing if not sensible. Still, you ask: What's the #1 tick in America?

Here at The Museum of Sudden Disappearances, we have no idea. But we can certainly reveal the #1 Verbal Tic in America. And deep down, you already know it. In a sense, it's so obvious, it's hidden. Hidden within plain sound. It's a cyst on society's sociolinguistic tongue.

Note the glazed eyeballs,
symptomatic of verbal tic addiction
(see Physicians' Desk Reference, page 666).

Before we mention it, beware. Once you see the phrase written here, you will make note, and remember it. The problem? You can never again not hear it. So be warned, you will hear it at least several times each day...day after day after day after day. And each time you hear it, your psychological well-being will take a hit, resulting in an unending erosion of your psyche. Think of it as the verbal equivalent of a cattle prod, a nasty jolt to the ears.

Still with us? You've been warned. You can stop reading and hit the Museum's exit, hit the crash bar on the door and flee. Otherwise, at the end of the day, you may start to lose your composure. You may punch your head through a wall as America's #1 Verbal Tic grinds into your ears. Because...

Come on, people. How many times have you heard "...at the end of the day...blah blah blah." Turn on the TV news. The radio. Hear it in daily discourse. Over and over like a drumbeat. It's the go-to mindless mantra of our times. These six words, "At the end of the day," have replaced these six words, "When all is said and done." Remember that? Remember when everyone said, "When all is said and done..." Those six words were interchangeable with these six words: "When you get right to it..."

Why is it always six words? Consider this...

Book of Revelation. The Number of the Beast: 666. What if 666 is a Biblical, apocalyptic reference, foreseeing the three dominant verbal tics of the 21st century, which will usher in endtimes? Imagine the world getting incinerated, not by nuclear war, but by a widespread, verbal tic exploding our brains. A weaponized cliche which, after you hear it for the quadrillionth time, detonates inside your skull.

At the end of the day at the end of the day at the end of the day at the end of the day at the end of the day I want to drop to my knees and flat-out scream (like James Brown, live at the Apollo) because at the end of the day I'm at my wit's end.....

How creepy is this? An actual photo of a verbal tic getting under your skin. The tic flies out of your radio while you're listening to a sobering, educational interview on NPR. The tic lands on your ear lobe, burrows in. Now, each time you hear "...(because) at the end of the day," the tic torpedoes a little further along in your bloodstream, heading for your brain.

All we need is to be needed? Is this dude serious? No. All we need is to never again hear, you know, those...six words.

Yes, even Lebron James got bit by the tic at this year's NBA Finals.

No. Caption incorrect. It should read: Lebron says "...at the end of the day, we were down two games, but, you know, at the end of the day it's just day's end which is at the end of the day."

If you made it this far, if you're down here reading this...you're infected. You're aware of the most overused, verbal crutch of the 21st century. Next time you turn on your TV or radio, be warned: the tick will fly out of the speakers and head for your head. It may take a half hour. Or seconds.

tic transmitter

How will you regain your sanity? You have one option. It's a medical procedure not covered by your insurance. Blue Cross Blue Shield does not cover verbal-tic removal. So you're gonna have to pony up the big bucks.

This poor dude (pictured below) turned on the radio, and within four measly minutes the tic flew out and hit him in the sweet spot. Mr. Lovejoy was rushed to Massachusetts General Eye, Ear and Tic Clinic, where a surgical team succeeded in flicking the tick. Per doctor's orders, the patient can never again turn on the news.

Perhaps you ask: "What if the patient goes outside and hears someone saying "...at the end of the day," and is again hit by the tic, and has a relapse?

Well, we Americans are known for our can-do spirit. Look how Mr. Lovejoy and his son, Dudley, solved the problem.

Whenever Mr. Lovejoy and Dudley emerge from the bunker, they're always dressed in their Calvin Klein beekeeper suits. In the (inevitable) chance that someone stops them on the street, and says, "Hello Mr. Lovejoy and little Dudley! Just so you two know, at the end of the day, I am at peace because my intentions are good and my heart is pure."

Not to worry. The Lovejoys will be protected. That verbal tic will fly from the speaker's mouth, but bounce off the Lovejoys' beekeeper masks.

So you see, a beekeeper mask can prevent Armageddon. This blog entry ends on a positive note (after a litany of horror). Because here at The Museum of Sudden Disappearances...

...we're all about being super positive (six words).

Why Facebook is a Digital Pee Pad

2018-03-29T10:34:00.001-07:00

The Darkly Dark Side of Facebook

From this...

The #DeleteFacebook movement is accelerating in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica fiasco.

...to this.

Aside from stealing data and subverting elections, an overlooked question remains. In a sense, is Mark Zuckerberg...a cyber Santa Claus?

Cyber Santa: "Ho ho ho!"

Said another way: Is Facebook like a giant quilt of Christmas cards? Billions and billions of electronic, holiday greeting cards? A digital daisy-chain of bullshit that celebrates Christmas year round?

The answer is obvious.

Ah, holiday greetings, mailed or emailed at Christmas. Here’s a boiled-down definition of many Christmas cards: one-upmanship. Here’s a boiled-down definition of one-upmanship: national pastime.

This kid just got a Christmas card...and can't believe how narcissistic it is.

We’ve all received that heartfelt card from a faraway friend. Their radiant letter requires sunglasses to read it. Ninety-nine percent of the message is a yearly round-up of the friend’s gilt-edged life and accomplishments, a shimmering success in every respect, nary a misstep. And worthy of capitalist canonization, whatever that means. For instance:

Dear Museum of Sudden Disappearances,

Merry Christmas! I stayed hammered for two weeks on the beach in Tahiti, celebrating my promotion as CEO of ExxonMobil. When I returned to my Bel-Air crib, I replaced all the chandeliers and bought seven Lamborghinis on a whim. I call them my Mondaymobile, Tuesdaymobile...oh, you get the picture. Then, holy smokes, things finally improved when Columbia Pictures called and begged me to star opposite Jennifer Lawrence in...blah blah blah.

The final 1% of the missive? At the very bottom, the focus shifts, and the missive becomes dismissive. You find this niggling afterthought:

PS: I see you’re still living at the same address.

Think of that PS as a 9mm pistol equipped with a suppressor. You almost can't hear the shot. It's almost a masterpiece of subtlety.

photo of a "subtle insult" delivery system

Gore Vidal understood the holiday spirit: "It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

Gore Vidal, an honest Ebenezer Scrooge

Enough. Let’s return to Facebook. Let’s imagine a Facebook member whose name is Sonny.

To Sonny, Facebook is his daily Christmas card to the world of friends and unfriends, showing the I-don’t-give-a-shit planet that Sonny’s life is a nonstop holiday. His posts and updates are digital documentation of his deified destiny. Via pictures and text, we see Sonny as the gold standard for humanoids. A life coach on steroids. Batman vs. Superman? Alien vs. Predator? How about...Sonny vs. Tony Robbins?

Hardly anyone (capable of shame) posts selfies after a five-day binge—tattered bathrobe, bewildered hair, maroon eyes, and a silver string swinging from their lower lip. Oops. That’s drool, a slo-mo yo-yo.

An honest selfie, the one you never see on Facebook.

Sonny posts photoshopped pics of himself on Rodeo Drive, entering the showroom (by invitation only) of the House of Bijan, the world's snootiest store. Everyone seeing his FB page feels like a total zero, calls Uber, and heads to the nearest bridge in tears.

Sonny's Facebook profile picture

But Sonny fibs. Sonny lives with Cher, his significant other. Sonny’s hunkered down on his PC, on the top floor of a rundown three-decker, with an overheated space-heater that uses two ten-foot extension cords that scream fire hazard. In the tiny kitchen by the yellow pee pad (a flattened newspaper), Cher Nobyl, a Russian Spaniel, is having a meltdown and barking. Translation: “Yo! I gotta poo! Lemme out before I have a Cher Nobyl disaster!”

What's up? Me. I'm #1. Me is the pee that hits the world's pad.

The vulgar slang, "Up yours," comes from the root word: one-upmanship. The one-up people think they are the pee, and the world is their pad. Tired of feeling one-upped on Facebook, and feeling belittled and piddled on?

The Pee Pad Plebeians are rising up. The PPP Revolution has begun.

If you #DeleteFacebook, you eliminate #SelfLoathing. You regain endless hours of your life. It's an easy, three-step program. Be a three-stepper.

#BuhByeFacebook

#RefuseXmasCards

#MakePeePadsGreatAgain.

Then buy an overpriced MPPGA red hat, and make every day a holiday!

Middle Class Miracle

2017-12-19T10:51:00.003-08:00

Trump Launches Tax Bill

Congress and President propel tax-relief bill. Simplified tax code written on a single roll of paper towels. Working Americans rejoice.

WTP...What the pluck?

2017-07-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

Fake News from an Alt-Universe

Anthony Scaramucci, "the Mooch," the frisky White House communications director, addressed 40,000 Boy Scouts at their national Jamboree.

Here's the Mooch signaling to the kids that he's #1. Below is the complete transcript of the rhetorician's remarks.

MOOCH: "Listen up, you little zits. Yeah, you...you filthy muh-fuh chicken pluckers! Now gimme me a 'Pee.' Gimme an 'L.' Gimme a 'You-See-Kay.' Wuss that spell?"

CROWD: "Pluck!

MOOCH: "WUSS...THAT...SPELL?"

CROWD: "PLUCK!"

MOOCH: "Go...pluck yo'selves! Pluck all you stupid plucks! Cuz I'm the effin meanest mama-plucker in town! I can pluck all nite long. I'm the dean of the lean mean pluck machines!"

crowd goes wild

Then the Mooch knocks it out of the park. "Eat yo' heart out...coz I'm a one-man pluck-fest!"

Jammin' at the Jamboree

EDITOR'S NOTE: Is this Emerson, Lake & Palmer? The Jimi Hendrix Experience or Nirvana?

Not exactly. Pictured above:

Left: Robert Pinski, Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the White House

Center: the Mooch

Right: Louis E. Gluck, Chancellor of the Academy of American Tongue-Twisters

go with the floe

2017-03-21T17:56:00.000-07:00

Today, after several months, I opened my blog's door again. I hit the lights and looked around. Where have I been?

The South Pole.

Think of it this way. Ernest Shackleton, early 20th century South Pole enthusiast, (allegedly) placed this 1912 expedition recruitment ad. Imagine seeing this in your favorite tabloid.

Let's make two edits. Let's change the first word, "Men," to "You are." And switch "small" to "zero." Now the ad reads:

"You are wanted for hazardous journey. Zero wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success.”

Presto! Shackleton, a snowshoe artist who was always "in the floe," unwittingly nailed the writer's world. Now the ad accurately describes the head-crushing experience of writing a novel.

Or here's the short version. These are the 12 words my muse coos when I begin banging out a new book. "Tighten yo' belt, ink-slinger, y'all in for a vertical-hair thrill ride."

At any rate, I just returned from the South Pole with my new novel. So, that's where I've been. I'll hit the lights on the way out.

2016 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion goes to...Jurassic Jim

2016-08-28T17:31:00.002-07:00

Last April, I received an email from out of the blue. It may as well have been a missive from outer space. Imagine SETI getting a blip from Pluto.

Emily E. informed me that the 9th Annual Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Awards were now open. KN was looking for the "...Best Books of 2015 and the Nominating Committee has identified Past is Present as a title we would be interested in considering. We invite you or your publisher to nominate this book at...The deadline is April 30."

Was I surprised and grateful? Hell yeah. I was...flattered. The F word. Did I submit and send Jurassic Jim Fleetwood down to Tennessee? Hell yeah. Did I think I had a shot? Hell no. I submitted in April, among a zillion other submissions, with the same confidence one has when buying a megabucks lottery ticket at the local beer store.

Cass Corridor, Detroit (my old neighborhood)

I made no plans to attend. I couldn't afford it, unless I hitchhiked there and slept at the city park. Of course, that was okay because I had no chance of winning. So why fly halfway across the country, run up my AmEx card, and watch excited strangers pop out of their chairs, arms in the air as if they're surrendering in a war zone, and get their award amid thunderous applause?

Detroit

Get real, I thought. I have no publisher, no agent, no editor, no hardcover or paperback copy of my book. PAST IS PRESENT, which features the irrepressible Jurassic Jim Fleetwood (the most out-of-it man in America) is available only as a digital download on Amazon. Jim Fleetwood was going up against print books. In short: it ain't happenin'.

Detroit has a surreal edge

I'm from Detroit. I'm a realist. We Detroiters deal with hard, gritty reality. I'm a former factory rat. I did my time on the assembly line at Dodge Main, a filthy hellhole that, according to a TV news report, had the "highest homicide rate of any plant in the state of Michigan."

Dodge Main waits for the wrecking ball

I know which way is up. When people refer to my hometown as D-Town, the D does not stand for "delusional." It stands for "Damn daddy...you ain't gonna zoom me. I'm zoom-proof." It'd take a world-class zoom-meister to zoom me.

Detroit

But hey, I thought: good luck to all those nice folks down there in Nashville. It was nice of 'em to give me a shout to brighten my otherwise ho-hum spring. It's not often we Detroit expatriates get that sort of tip of the hat.

Then Earth wiggled on its axis. Were endtimes nigh?

Yearly "Dally in the Alley," Cass Corridor, Detroit
(best party in the world)

On August 15, I received another email. This sentence actually appeared right near the top of the missive: "And here's some good news for you!" That's no typo. Good news. G-O-O-D.

I was a...finalist. Yes, the F word. I was thrilled. I laughed. I had urinary incontinence. How was this statistically possible? This news was light years beyond my expectations. I thought: good luck to all those nice finalists down there. But hey, I'm from Detroit. I'm a realist. We Detroiters deal with hard, gritty reality. Life is a roundhouse punch, then you fall into a valley of razor blades. No freakin' way I'm getting beyond finalist. D? I'll tell you what D stands for: Down-to-earth. Dispirited. Disheartened. Borderline depressed. But hey, we ain't no Ding-Dongs. We are zoom-proof.

My old apartment building in the Corridor, right side
(best alley in the world)

Last Saturday night the winners for the 2016 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Awards were announced at the Conference in Nashville. I had no idea who won. Why? Because I didn't attend. Why would I? Jim Fleetwood and I had no chance. Jim, America's premier vintage deejay, really, really, really understands the D word. For Jim, life has been a nonstop assault by Murphy's Law. Jim knows all about getting Murphed. But this time, we weren't gonna get tricked by the Murph. We may be Finalists, but we are also Realists. The R word.

Australia, the land of larrikins
(best sanctuary for Earth's eccentrics)

And then...early Thursday morning, I got an email from a wonderful friend in Australia, who congratulated Jim and me for...

Which explains this:

Another D word. Doctor.

2016 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Awards

2016-08-17T08:09:00.000-07:00

Can you say...Xanax?

I'm not on medication, but I do cop to occasional bouts of 'prose disorder,' when a novel-in-progress isn't going well. But the word 'Xanax' came to mind on Monday night when I received an email from Clay Stafford, founder of Killer Nashville International Writers Conference. In short, my thriller PAST IS PRESENT, featuring deejay "Jurassic Jim" Fleetwood, is a Silver Falchion Award Finalist in three categories: Best Thriller, Best Comedy, and Judges’ Choice Award for special merit in a particular subgenre, topic, or category.

click image for link to Killer Nashville page

There should have been a fourth category: Best Heart-Attack Inducer. That email punched me out, brought me to the brink of a urinary mishap, and shaved six months off the end of my life. But like they say, nothing is free.

The winners will be announced on Saturday night, August 20, 2016.

At any rate, I really, greatly appreciate the nod. I'm going to submit the names of the Killer Nashville staff to the Vatican for canonization consideration. Imagine a Killer Nashville saint statue in a church--the saint wears a trench coat and points a Glock at the parishioners, and practically says, "Shape up, sinners."

Thanks Killer Nashville!

This is my thriller. If you click the cover, it'll whisk you to the Amazon page, which has a book description. You can also see sample pages.

For the 40 billion people who've never heard of "Jurassic Jim" Fleetwood, here's a peek at the most out-of-it man in America.

Jim, a freewheeling romantic, is forever fighting to preserve timeless music, antique watches, and the 1957 two-tone Chevy (among other classic gems) that are fast fading from our world.

"Obsolete," he insists, "rhymes with sweet."

Oh, and there’s this. This is key to his world vision. A large heart is something he always puts a high premium on because it’s such a rare thing of beauty. He knows from experience that, in this world, you are usually served up cold heart, no heart, heartburn, halfhearted, heartsick, heartache, heartbreak, hard heart, heart of stone, heartless or, absolute rock-bottom worst of all, heart-lite—which is low-cal, no-fat heart. To Jim, heart-lite is porn: heart without emotion.

Have You Seen my ROBOT?

2016-03-28T14:08:00.001-07:00

This is what happened.

Recently I had a recurring dream. Actually, a dream fragment, or dream dust. Once or twice each night, like clockwork, I heard a stranger's voice in my head. The stranger asked this question: "Have you seen my robot?"

Night after night (after night after night) the question arose. I reached a point where I would fold the pillow over my ears and say, "No. Scram."

Finally, I surrendered. I wrote "Have you seen my robot?" at the top of a page, and then wrote a short story based on a few scenes that I had dreamt. As a result, the disembodied voice is gone. I sleep better. Marginally better. I now hear another internal voice, which asks, "Have you seen the rent money?"

Anyway, here's the story, which contains some cursing. Nothing you haven't already heard while walking down the street or standing in line at the supermarket. Which reminds me. Years ago I was standing in the checkout line at the market. A boy in front of me, maybe 11 or 12 years old, glanced up at me, smiled, and said in a low, confidential tone, "Go fuck yourself."

My response? Did I massage his head with my can of soup? No. I laughed. Most of life boils down to two options: laugh or scream. I refuse to scream each time I witness bad behavior. I'm not a fan of bad behavior, but screaming is usually futile. More often than not, screaming encourages boors and bullies. I prefer to laugh. These folks are impervious to moral indignation. You really wanna get their attention? Laugh at 'em. Ridicule hits like a hand grenade.

Enough. Where was I? Oh, here's the story. It's got cussing, horrible behavior, bullies...and hit-back humor. Ideally, you should read this story while standing in the checkout line at the supermarket.

I'd like to dedicate this story to the little brat who told me to go eff myself. Who knows? Maybe my laughter nudged him in a new direction. Maybe he turned his life around and is now a grief counselor or runs a soup kitchen. Or maybe he's in county lock-up for a few months for indecent exposure. Which is no laughing matter.

* * *

Have You Seen My R.OB.O.T.?

When Rhonda spotted the poster on the telephone pole, she froze.

HAVE YOU SEEN MY ROBOT?

Beneath the streetlight were three posters. Two weather-beaten ads were taped on the wooden utility pole—flyers for lost dogs, showing their furry faces and offering rewards. Above them was a very fresh poster. The girl’s face on the black-and-white photocopy looked familiar—chubby cheeks, thin lips. A sense of recognition emerged, as if Rhonda Warwick were developing film in a darkroom, staring into a tray of chemicals. The pictured girl’s eyes were closed, but her long dark hair mysteriously defied gravity in a wild halo.

Because she’s lying down, not sitting or standing.

The pictured girl wore a light-colored top with tiny, dark butterflies.

Just like the top Rhonda was wearing beneath her blue jacket: a yellow top printed with blue butterflies. Leaning forward under the streetlamp, she felt dizzy. Thinking…it can’t be. Her extended fingertip touched the photo. Yes. It was her picture, hers. A headshot. Taken while Rhonda had been lying asleep…on a floor?

In large, black letters, the caption below read:

HAVE YOU SEEN MY ROBOT?

Rhonda’s heart trembled. Looking up, she saw the Hunter’s Moon had already trudged halfway across the sky. Time: the wee hours. The dark houses nearby didn’t appear decrepit, unlike the one she just exited. Five minutes ago she had woken on a dusty floor, inside the abandoned house across the street. The word amnesia came to mind. Somehow she had arrived there, after…after what?

She focused on the street. No distant headlights, no sound of approaching footsteps in the night. She was alone. A sudden gust rattled tree leaves along the empty lane, snapping her reverie. She concentrated on the impossible question.

HAVE YOU SEEN MY ROBOT?

Her eyes drifted up and down the poster—the picture, the question. This was English as a foreign language. She weaved on her feet. Recent events slowly coalesced in her memory, a jigsaw puzzle piecing itself together. She had been at a noisy house party with a crowd of kids from school. Someone had said, “Here, drink this.” Soon after, the night had gone out of focus. Then…lights out.

Time blurred, until she had woken alone in the strange house with virtually no recollection of her arrival, as if carried in by noiseless pallbearers. An image came to mind: teenage pallbearers, sneaky teenage girls. Now a rising sense of unease coursed through her, like a swollen river during a storm. She wondered if she’d been unconscious for over twenty-four hours…and this was the next night.

She thought she heard something, and looked to the right.

Down the street a pair of headlights snapped on, putting her in the spotlight. A parked car awoke at this late hour. The first sign of life in the vicinity.

Coincidence?

Instinctively, she turned for the sidewalk and retreated into the safety of darkness, hustling up the street. Nothing in the neighborhood looked familiar, but it was hard to tell in the moonlight.

Where am I?

She heard a noise. Vooorrrmm…vooorrmmm. The car started. She peeked over her shoulder. Slowly, the headlights swerved onto the street and moved toward her at a parallel speed.

Maybe it was nothing. But the word lucky wasn’t part of her world tonight.

She quickened her pace, advancing toward another streetlight. Another sheet of white paper was attached to the utility pole. Curiosity seized her. She stepped off the curb. She stiffened upon seeing her picture again, with a different message posted below it:

R.OB.O.T.

What’s that acronym mean?

This:

Repulsive Oddball Obese Teen

She was chubby, sure, but not obese. However, repulsive? An oddball teenager? At her high school, robot was the slang word that bullies called kids who didn’t fit in—usually overweight and unpopular, or flat-out geeky. She hated that cruel word, robot.

Several doors away, the car braked in the middle of the street. Two headlights shone in the night, two bright eyes watching her. A cat and mouse came to mind.

She glanced again at the car as a gust of wind lifted her hair in the air, making it stand on end, a fright wig. She retreated to the sidewalk and broke into a jog. On the next block, she saw her same picture again under another streetlamp. Her shoes stopped.

LOST R.OB.O.T.

16 years old

Worthless, Stupid, Pathetic

No Reward

The car trailed her. Hunter, prey.

Sweat dampened her collar. The street was a dark tunnel with a single direction. She hurried along with no destination in mind, only escape. Behind her, the car increased its speed and narrowed the gap. Voices were now audible. Two or three voices.

She peered ahead. At the end of the street lay a wide black ribbon under the stars. The Charles River. Beyond it, Boston’s jagged skyline pierced the horizon, studded with electric lights. The iconic, bright red CITGO sign towered in the distance near Fenway Park, which, at that angle, suggested her own location. She was in Cambridge, in an old neighborhood called Cambridgeport. She headed toward the river, passing yet another utility pole with a poster and her picture:

LOST R.OB.O.T.

Her name is Rhonda Warwick.

She’s a 16 year old dog.

She’s totally stupid.

She went missing last night,

24 hours ago,

But she’s NOT missed.

If you see her…

Call the dog catcher.

A sudden realization: posters, car…it was all a setup. She’d been knocked out and transported. Her picture had been taken at the abandoned house, photocopied, posted. And now, like a cow in a herd, she was being driven in a specific direction.

Why?

At the bottom of the street she turned left; a minute later, right. She got onto the Boston University Bridge that led to Boston. Soon her shadow appeared in front of her on the narrow sidewalk alongside the railing, backlit from oncoming headlights. The sound of the car’s engine buried the sound of water lapping the riverbank. The car came closer. The cackles grew louder. A red Ford Focus leapt up behind her.

“Rhonda Warwick!” a girl cried. “Hey, you look like a warlock! Hey, Rhonda Warlock!”

A different girl’s voice: “Yo, dog!”

Laughter exploded in the car. The girls pulled up beside Rhonda. She recognized her three classmates. They were all sixteen. Two hung through the open windows on the passengers’ side, arms extended, each giving her the finger with both hands. Madison, Brianna, and Kaylee were her gym-class torturers. They’d begin their daily taunting when everyone undressed for gym. Sometimes Rhonda’s clothes would disappear. The school’s torture chamber included a swimming pool, a climbing rope, and dodge ball.

Madison Fairchild, the driver, had pink hair and a pink scarf. She hunched like a sniper over the steering wheel, and said with a baby voice, “Hey, fatfuck! You look…LOST!”

Rhonda’s head swelled with heat. The bridge seemed unreal. Was she walking? Or floating in steamy air?

Brianna, riding shotgun, wore bright lipstick the color of blood. She formed an O with her pierced lips and whistled. “Here, Fido. Here, Bowser.” Whistle, whistle. “Come on. Here, girl. Roll over. Sit up. Beg.”

Kaylee poked her pretty head through the backseat window, a blond-hair-in-wind fashion model with puppy eyes. “Rhonda, honey? You wanna ride back to your doghouse?”

“You need to go to the big kennel in the sky,” Brianna said.

“Rhonda,” Madison shouted. “Boys call you, ‘T and A.’ Know what that is? ‘Tourist Attraction.’ You’re a loser. You need to get lost, you loo zah!”

Rhonda averted her eyes and hurried along the footpath, nearing the middle of the bridge. Her skin was afire.

The three voices became a crude chorus. Their words cut like steel spikes on throwing stars.

“Everyone hates you, you pathetic loo zah!”

“Gimme an L. Gimme a Z. Wuss that spell? Loo zah!”

“Everyone is sicka you.”

Rhonda stumbled on the pavement. The temperature soared, the air a furnace. She struggled to breathe. Everything in sight was melting: bridge, skyline, river. Life was a blast furnace. She stopped and gripped the railing, leant over, and swooned.

“Do us all a…fay…vah.”

“Do the…right thing.”

“Jump, you cow!”

How quickly the world could flip. No reason for hanging on. All of it…

Gone.

Rhonda suddenly heard music, earthly music. Then she saw stars under her shoes as she dropped headfirst through the chilly air. The river rushed up to greet her.

Up on the bridge—thump thump thump—a drum machine and a bass guitar pounded out dance music on the radio. Tires screeched as the Ford took off.

Rhonda hit the cold, brittle water. The collision felt as if she’d been thrown through a car’s windshield. The sound of breaking glass exploded in her ears.

She sank at least thirty feet and landed on the icky bottom, holding her breath. Blinded by the dark water, she reached out. Her left hand touched slimy metal. Some angry asshole, way back when, had thrown a bicycle over the bridge. She could feel a slimy, wire basket attached to the handlebars, and a rusty bicycle bell.

“This is it,” she thought. “This is where I die.”

She tasted dirty water and waited for the end to come. Her thumb touched the rotary-action lever. She imagined herself pressing it, zing zing. She imagined the lunacy of a bike bell underwater, while peddling across the bottom of the river. “Hurry, get out of my way, I can’t hit the brakes in time.”

The next minute or two were surreal. Of all the ways to have her life end, and here she was, feet stuck in mud, utterly alone, unable to see her hand in front of her face.

By the third minute, she suspected something was amiss. She didn’t swallow water and gag. She didn’t struggle, throttle back, feel drowsy and lose consciousness. By the fourth minute nothing made sense. Zero. She should have drowned and joined the angels by now. Instead, she felt the same as when she first fell in.

Confusion led to paralysis. She stood underwater.

Hours passed.

Dim sunlight pierced the water. Sunrise. Later, a yellow kayak passed directly overhead, twenty-five feet above. A paddle sliced water. A beer can, thrown overboard, headed to the muddy bottom. A Budweiser depth charge. The paddle resumed slicing the water. The kayak disappeared.

Head upturned, she spent the day watching the white circle of sun crawl like a water bug across the river’s surface. Staring at the sky for so long put her in mind of celestial matters.

She considered these eternal questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going?

Whatever the answers, she was clearly different from the other kids. And evidently being different put her in deep trouble. She recalled the expression, being in deep water, which meant being in a difficult situation.

Such as this.

As the sun inched across the sky, she sensed that a task lay ahead of her. This inner drive propelled her into action.

Sunset oozed into dusk. God dialed down the nightly dimmer switch.

She began walking underwater in the direction of the Cambridge riverbank. The light brown water suggested diluted coffee. She could only see a few yards in front of her, which was enough. After all, even life above ground was nearly imperceptible.

Slogging across the muddy bottom, she sidestepped cans, bottles, and Styrofoam containers. Plus a shopping cart, wagon wheels, fishing rods, a gun belt, a plastic ninja sword. It was a junkyard down here, a jigsaw jumble of junk, beneath the public’s view. Along the way, once or twice, she felt a tiny fish comb through her wiggly hair.

Soon the water’s surface drew closer. Ambient sounds became audible: traffic, car horns. She plodded into shallow water, her feet feeling the steady incline of the ground, nature’s muddy ramp paved with rocks and stones. Finally her forehead broke the surface, free. Then her eyes, ears, face felt the cool wind off the Charles. Step by step she emerged from the river. She was not alone.

On land, a human scarecrow pushed a shopping cart full of beer and soda cans. He noticed her rising miraculously out of the water. Enough. He circled his cart on the grass and headed the other way.

Rhonda Warwick, back from the dead, headed home in her wet clothes.

* * *

He sifted through his email at his home office in Cambridge. One arrived with a question he was often asked: “Dr. Warwick, how did you become a robotics engineer?”

He began typing in his answer: “It began when, as a teenager, I tried to build a robotic hand in my parent's basement. I was a very, very nerdy teenager…LOL.”

LOL? What bullshit. His teen years were anything but LOL. Those years were nonstop misery. He’d been a goofy-looking science nerd with acne and a brush cut—a human target. Now his name was Doctor Derek Warwick. Back then, kids at school had nicknamed him…Derek Pin-Dick. Body parts had been an inexhaustible area of interest at his high school. As a teen, Derek once dreamt that the school issued report cards that included body parts. If, say, your nose was too big, dick too small, or you were fat and farted a lot, you got an F.

His wife entered the room, holding a custom cell phone. “She’s coming up the street,” Louise Warwick said, checking the screen. “She’s had quite an eventful two days.”

Both were engineers. Last year, they built Rhonda and put a tiny camera in her eye, a tiny microphone in her ear. Rhonda’s visual and auditory fields were linked to the phone, allowing her to be monitored. If needed, sounds and images could also be downloaded for later use.

Derek had first met the former Louise Hinkle in their high school’s science class. A few nasty kids had nicknamed the skinny little girl with glasses, La Wheeze the Sleeze. The name had made no sense, but bullying never did.

“Well,” Derek said with a smile, “the fun part begins.”

The proud parents went to the front door and opened it.

Rhonda, head bowed and hair muddy, trudged up the porch steps. “Sorry for being so late. Am I grounded?”

“Of course not, sweetheart.” Derek wrapped an arm across his daughter’s wet shoulders, steering her into the house. “Everything is copacetic.”

“Goodness,” Louise said, “let’s get you out of those nasty clothes. Take a nice hot shower, have supper, and get to bed. We have an interesting day planned for tomorrow.”

“But I have school,” Rhonda said.

Louise’s eyes lit up. A thin smile creased her mouth. “We know.”

* * *

The next morning, Madison Fairchild followed her weekday routine. She backed out of her parent’s three-car garage, and picked up Brianna and Kaylee for school. Just before eight o’clock, they walked three abreast across the parking lot. Someone whistled.

Brianna said, “Sometimes I get tired of the wolf whistles. Like that’s gonna give a guy access to my Gucci jeans.”

“My silk floral pants deserve to be flown from the flagpole in front of the school,” Kaylee said. “The boys can look up and salute my pants when they arrive in the morning.”

“Upon graduation,” Madison said, “I’m gonna donate my wicker print silk pants to the school. They can put my pants in the trophy case by the principal’s office. Charge tickets to touch it.”

All three laughed, until they stopped at the side entrance door.

“What…?” Madison, her mouth agape, faced the poster taped to the door. She saw a photocopied picture of three girls inside a Ford Focus at night. The car was on a bridge, a dark river in the background. Beneath the picture, Madison read:

Have you seen these R.OB.O.T.s?

What’s that acronym mean?

Rude Obnoxious Ordinary Trash

Was she hallucinating? This was a picture of their girls’ night out, which was all it was, really. Innocent fun. What, people can’t take a joke? Who could’ve known that Rhonda Warwick would go off the deep end?

“This is truly, totally, absolutely fucked up,” Brianna said. “What sort of sicko…?”

Madison felt an ice pick headache at the top of her skull. “It’s like Rhonda Warwick leaned toward the car with a hidden camera, hidden in her hair or something. But she’s like gone. Totally gone!”

“So who would’ve put this up?” Kaylee said.

“Oh my God,” Brianna said. “What if she’s still alive?”

Madison ripped it off the door and threw it on the ground. “Don’t say a word. Nothing. Whatever happens—keep your mouths shut.” Her two friends looked as terrified as she felt.

At eleven o’clock, all three were together again for gym class. They monitored the door while sitting on a long bench by the lockers, undressing with trembling hands. The room was filled with the voices of eighteen other girls; plain girls with freckled faces and plain lives.

And then Madison’s worst nightmare materialized. Rhonda Warwick was the last to arrive. She had a blank expression, and sat nearby in silence, reaching for her unfashionable bathing suit inside her locker.

“Into the pool,” said their teacher, Miss Asimov, clapping her hands.

Madison, peeking at Rhonda down the bench, wondered if everyone in the room had suddenly fallen silent. Because the only thing Madison could hear was blood thrumming in her ears. She was terrified.

Minutes later, she dove into the pool and opened her eyes underwater. Above her, twenty girls were swimming, forty feet kicking. Directly ahead, she saw Rhonda Warwick standing at the bottom of twelve feet of water, a virtual statue, facing her. Just the two of them. Rhonda slowly reached out, curling the fingers of an upturned hand, as if beckoning Madison to come hither. Then Rhonda swam toward her like a shark.

Madison Fairchild made the mistake of screaming underwater.

At the end of the school day, the three girls barely spoke as they staggered back to Madison’s car.

“What happened today?” Brianna asked. “I don’t understand it.”

Kaylee shrugged. “Me neither. It’s wicked weird.”

Madison was too freaked to reply. Her heart sank when she saw a piece of paper waiting for her under the windshield wiper. They climbed into the car, locked the doors, and read the note.

go to bridge for breathtaking view

“This has gotta end.” Madison, behind the wheel, turned to her friends. “She’s gonna put posters up all over the school. She’s gonna terrorize us in gym class. It’s one against three. She’s just a robot, for fucksake, a fat chick with an attitude.”

“This is so humiliating.” Brianna rubbed her face with her hands. “How dare she unleash the nasty on us.”

“Either we stop it now, or it’s gonna get worse.” Madison keyed the ignition. “I say we go to the bridge. We deal with it—today.”

Kaylee nodded. “What nerve. Calling us rude, obnoxious, ordinary, trash. Robots!”

They sped across Cambridge and turned onto the bridge.

“I wonder where the slut is?” Madison drove below the speed limit, her eyes sweeping both sides of the bridge. Midday traffic was light. “I don’t see anything unusual.”

Brianna said, “Let’s stop…at the…you know, spot.”

Madison braked midway on the bridge, blocking one of two lanes leading to Boston. “Let’s be quick.”

They got out and stepped to the side of the bridge, looking down at the rippling water of the Charles.

Two cars drove by.

“I’ll give her one minute,” Madison said. “Then we’re outa here.”

For ten or twelve seconds nothing happened as they stood in the wind.

“Look,” Kaylee said, pointing straight down. “What’s…?”

Madison studied the spot, seeing something deep in the water rising to the surface. The creature had hands, arms. A blurred face appeared and broke the water’s surface.

Rhonda Warwick.

All three gasped on the bridge as if spotting a mermaid.

Rhonda bobbed in the water, facing them with a Mona Lisa smile.

“She’s…swimming…in the…” Brianna clenched her fists in the air. “She’s…”

Madison felt a sick swirl inside her. She grasped the cold metal rail, sensing that events were still spiraling down. Another disturbance in the water confirmed her fear. Another figure rose from the depths.

A second Rhonda Warwick. Twice the nightmare.

The two look-alikes stared up at the bridge, each making the come hither sign with curled fingers.

The first Rhonda called out, “Oh, girls—jump in!”

“Surf’s up!” beckoned the second Rhonda.

Kaylee and Brianna shrieked in unison.

Madison turned toward the Cambridge side of the bridge when she heard her name called.

“Madison…yoo hoo…oh Madison…”

A third Rhonda appeared on the bridge in wet clothes, racing toward them at inhuman speed.

“Ohmygod!” Madison gasped.

She and her two friends rushed into her car. Windows up, doors locked, nick of time. Madison started the car with a shaky key, chanting:

“Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit…”

Rhonda flew by the driver’s window and stopped in front of the hood. She faced the windshield and waved.

Madison jumped in her seat. Her feet hit the gas, the brake. The car lurched eight or ten feet, stopped and died. Rhonda disappeared as if she’d dropped through a trapdoor.

The girls squealed inside the car: “We ranner over!” They froze when they heard the noise.

Knock, knock, knock.

Rhonda, lying under the car, knuckled the steel floorboard. “Hey, girls. It’s me. Rhonda. Rhonda Warwick. So, like, ya wanna go swimming?”

Kaylee and Brianna said, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

Madison nearly puked. The doors flew open. They fled on foot across the bridge toward Boston.

* * *

Within fifteen minutes, the Cambridge Police found an abandoned, red Ford on the bridge. Leading up to the car were wet footprints. On the driver’s side, under the windshield wiper, was a peculiar note.

I, R.OB.O.T.

What’s that acronym mean?

Revenge of the Obstreperous Ominous Teen

* * *

“Well, that was entertaining.” Louise, sitting beside her husband in their home office, watched the computer’s screen.

“Sick fun!” Derek agreed.

“Those three girls can’t take a joke. Ha, ha. Bullies are so insecure. They rip others with impunity, but pee their pants when they get goofed on. Bullies should wear special underwear, especially to gym class.”

Derek’s eyes brightened in anticipation. “And the design?”

“Hmm,” Louise said. “Perhaps rubber underwear with a small battery attached to the crotch. Whenever a bully gets ridiculed, he’ll wet his pants in anger, which will activate the battery, and set off an electrical shock right to his little yum-yum.”

“That’s amazing,” Derek said. “You’ve designed shock therapy for underwear.”

“Honey, I’m an engineer. MIT. Top of the class.”

“Well, let’s hope the Ford girls contact the authorities and report two Rhondas in the chilly Charles on an October afternoon, and a third Rhonda attempting auto theft through the floorboard.”

Louise clapped her hands. “Perhaps they’ll get a field sobriety test.”

“Our Rhonda robots got quite a workout today.” He checked the clock on the wall: 4:10 p.m. “Well, they can hide underwater until nightfall, then walk home in the dark.”

Later that night, the phone rang and Louise answered. “Hello?”

“Louise? It’s Bob McSweeney in St. Louis.”

Louise switched to speaker-phone. “Hey, Bob! Did you get the package?”

“I’m calling to thank you and Derek. FedEx dropped off the crate. I’ll have my Rhonda enrolled in school in no time. What fun! This is truly ‘revenge of the nerds.’ When I was growing up, I had a stuttering problem. Kids would make me eat my plastic pocket protector. They called me ‘jizzmouth.’”

Derek said, “I remember the J-word. It’s on page ten of the Bully Handbook. Right after the chapter on ‘How to dunk a classmate’s head into a toilet bowl at school.”

“Well,” Bob said. “Jizzmouth is about to pummel ass.”

Louise posted two thumbs in the air. “Go get ‘em, Bob. Nerd Nation is behind you.”

“I live by the Mississippi River,” Bob said. “Wait’ll bullies chase Rhonda in there. And then she shows up the next day at school…on a comical rampage!”

Derek pumped his fist. “We’ve got nerdy customers lining up all over the country. Last week alone, Rhondas made their debut by marching out of the Missouri River, the Detroit River, the Potomac, and the Rio Grande.”

“Next month,” Louise said, “a plan is underway to get Rhonda chased into the Niagara River near Buffalo. They’ll think she drowned. But she’ll reappear, going right over Niagara Falls, waving her hat and flipping the finger. Picture…the ‘Maid of the Mist’ telling ‘em to put it up their ass!”

Bob shrieked through the speakers. “I’m having…a nerdgasm.”

Louise danced barefoot on the carpet, low-kneed, jerky nerd moves. Then she heard a door squeak open at the side kitchen entrance off the driveway.

“I’ll get it,” Derek told her.

Louise watched her husband leave the room. A moment later, she heard voices.

“Well,” Derek said in the kitchen, “look who’s here. It’s Rhonda, Rhonda and Rhonda.”

“Sorry for being late, dad. Are we grounded?”

“Of course not, girls.” Derek clapped his hands. “Everything is…copacetic.”

EXIT - on sale March 6-12

2016-03-06T11:21:00.000-08:00

Jump out of your seat...

Head for the EXIT

...while you still have time.

Urban renewal? Gentrification?

Amazon doorstep delivery?

Folks, we're screwed.

EXIT on sale this week from March 6-12

What's this thriller about? Well, it's not a cheery view regarding drones flying into our near-future like a plague of locusts. You can read a review here at BestThrillers. Or you can peek at the post, below. Yes, that's Rod Serling down there. Mr. Twilight Zone himself. He sums up the story with his signature panache. If your blood pressure is a bit elevated today, you may want to skip all this.

If you page down, you will see two more drone-related posts. The posts have a comic touch. EXIT, however, is a near-future thriller with touches of humor, usually dark. Much like real life, which is filled with gallows humor, while spiking everyone's blood pressure.

PS: To the rugged visitors of this blog, The Museum of Sudden Disappearances, who check in from time to time, see the same ol' damn thang, and may wonder, "Tom, are you taking a junket on your junky couch while wearing your America's #1 Malingerer t-shirt?" Jeepers, no. I'm chugging along on two novels. One is another Jim Fleetwood story, featuring a teenage Jim (pre-mustache Jim). The other novel is about...well, right now it's about 25,000 words. So, ya know, the blog takes a hit.

nano drones fly into the Twilight Zone

2016-03-05T17:00:00.000-08:00

In late January, 2015, a small drone crashed onto the White House lawn in the middle of the night. According to reports, the drone operator had been drinking. Huh. Imagine a dude sucking down a $3 bottle of fortified wine, and then sending his toy drone (the ultimate Frisbee) over to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Really, what kind of world do we live in? Which brings me to Mr. Serling.

If Rod Serling returned temporarily from the Twilight Zone, what would he think of drones, particularly commercial drones, which are popping up all over the planet. Would he say, "Oh, goodie!" Or would he take a slightly more dim view?

I've been thinking about the host of the Twilight Zone because my new thriller, EXIT, received this 5-star review:

“…Didn't want to put this down, reminds me of old Twilight Zone episodes. Whereas you won't find any pig nosed doctors operating on your face, you might just find an alternate dimension in a movie theater. Really good read!”

Along with zillions of fans, I love that classic TV show. And, yes, EXIT is a bit in the Zone. What's the novel about? Picture the onset of drones all over the world, add nano technology, then open the door to the Twilight Zone. In short, welcome to the near-future.

What would Rod think? Maybe this.

(Cue up the Twilight Zone music.) Ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome back...Rod Serling.

"Mr. Serling?" we ask. "Overrun by...what?"

"These," Rod Serling replies in his smoky, velvet voice, while holding up his fingertip.

"Recently," Rod continues, "a small drone the size of a pizza pie crashed onto the White House lawn. Now small drones have been spotted in Paris, mysteriously flying over famous landmarks in the French capital. This is nothing. Wait till these tiny drones (see above picture) fill the skyline like air pollution. Wait till brain-blasted sociopaths and crazed corporations (see below picture) get their hands on these.

CEO of Drones-R-Us

"What's a nano drone? It's Pandora's Box with six legs and two wings. It's Murphy's Law disguised as an insect. It's the thing flying outside your bedroom window in the middle of the night, spying on you. The days of the traditional Peeping Tom are coming to a close.

Unannounced visitor caught on camera
(conventional stalker displaying traditional stalker standards).

"Who sent the tiny drone? Begin your list of suspects with this queasy question: 'Who is the most irrational person I know?' (I know, I know. It's an extremely long list of candidates, but choose.)

Irrational person? This is the poster boy.

Imagine this nitwit ordering a drone online.

"Now imagine, if you will, that volatile miscreant (see above dudes) operating a commercial drone capable of carrying a five-pound package of mayhem. Ponder that for a moment, then resume your slumber. Or not. Because...you're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas, of drones and revenge. You've just crossed over…"

Rod pauses, takes a weary drag on his cigarette. Smoke pours between his teeth as he concludes, "Next stop, the Twilight Zone."

After his disturbing remarks, Rod Serling waves goodbye, and downloads a copy of my thriller, EXIT. With his Kindle in hand, he returns to his room at the Bates Motel.

Imagine Norman Bates buying a drone.

Later that night, he disappears back into the Twilight Zone. Perhaps Rod will return again someday. However, he did leave this cryptic selfie taped to the mirror in his motel room. Make of it what you will.

authentic Rod Serling selfie

#

(Cue up the Twilight Zone music.) Ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...ding ding...

on sale for 99 cents this week, March 6 - 12

Past is Present - on sale this week for $0.99

2016-01-04T13:30:00.000-08:00

"PURE JOY. The most compelling time-travel adventure we've read since Stephen King's 11/22/63." -- Bella Wright, BestThrillers.com

You can read the complete review HERE. Or grab your suitcase and get...

All aboard.

Hey, this ain't no Toyota!

Tired of 2016? Sick of the 21st century? Here's a cheap ticket to time-travel back to 1968 and 1993. Two nail-biting trips for the price of one. Yes, ricochet through time. Get rebounded, be astounded. Laugh, cringe, cry, collapse!

On sale: January 5-11

Past is Present

(a "Jurassic Jim" Fleetwood novel)

a 99¢ e-book on Amazon

Care to hitch a ride off the beaten track? Hop inside. Jurassic Jim is behind the wheel of his beloved Runaround Sue, a 1957 two-tone Chevy. This car brakes for romantics and dreamers, but will run over and crush all heartless, soulless nitwits. No exceptions. Sue also specializes in head-on collisions with the modern world (the modern world is vastly overrated).

- Runaround Sue -

The 8-cylinder Aphrodite of the Auto World

This car deserves to win the Miss Universe Contest.

WARNING: this luxury automobile may make you piddle your pants. Yes, she's a knockout. The American Medical Association has declared that "...Runaround Sue is the leading cause of urinary incontinence across the U.S." Grown men collapse and weep just looking at her.

So, wanna go for a ride? By the way, this car has no brakes. Why would it? When you ride with Jim, you go full speed ahead. Brakes are for people who refuse to dream. Ready? It's time to wet your pants and re-embrace life.

Hop in. Here goes. Windows down, radio up. Buckle your seat belt, grab the dashboard to brace yourself, then bounce between 1968 and 1993. Jim is gonna take you to places you will never forget. And who better to take you back in time than the most backward man in America?

Ready?

For a copy, click PAST and give yourself a present.

Santa sends Xmas gifts via drones

2015-12-11T19:29:00.001-08:00

Forget the quaint picture above, imagine this news headline:

Santa sends Christmas gifts via drones

“Flexible workforce,” said Santa, when asked why he upgraded (fired) his package carriers (reindeer). “I saw the writing on the wall: climate change. Here at the North Pole, the ice is melting. Reindeer will soon be extinct. So I downsized Rudolph and the other disgruntled deer. Oh, well, ten fewer mouths to feed. Screw ‘em. Ha ha. Drones, baby, are the way to go. You don’t feed drones. You just attach cheesy gifts, and send them out around the world. ‘Tis the season for merry mayhem.”

Here at The Museum of Sudden Disappearances Blog, we reminded Mr. Claus that the FAA set laws regarding drones, including these laughable restrictions:

-  Stay under four hundred feet.
-  Keep your drone in sight at all times.
-  Stay far away from manned aircraft.
-  Don't fly in bad weather...such as high winds and reduced visibility.
-  Stay five miles away from an airport or two miles from a heliport.

Santa frowned. "Restrictions? Seriously? Give a boy a BB gun on Christmas. Wait one day. Watch. He’ll be shooting at windows, birds, cars, neighbors, pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, unicyclists, schools, police stations, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, crowded city buses, City Hall, and folks walking out of church. Fortunately, only two types of targets fall under his purview: things that move, things that don’t move. All else is off-limits.”

Asked if he could describe this typical, innocent lad, Santa replied:

"A book was written about an innocent child who got a BB gun for Christmas, and underwent a personality disorder within 10 minutes. The little boy's name was Freddie. You may have heard of it. The book is called..."

"Jackal," Santa went on, "is actually a thinly-veiled autobiography of a boy who gets a BB gun for Christmas, and in no time becomes an international assassin on a ten-speed bicycle."

Asked if he could further describe innocent kids like Freddie, Santa replied:

“Typically, he’s a chubby-cheeked sniper with crooked teeth and a Justin Bieber haircut. His moral view of the world could fit within a buttonhole. I should know. I’ve delivered tons of BB guns. I’m December’s #1 gun runner. There is no background check for BB guns. Or for drones. It’s already projected that a million drones may be under Christmas trees in 2015, prices starting at $20 on up. By December 26, our skies will be crowded with surface-to-air toys of trouble and terror. Everyone currently not hiding inside the International Space Station will be a potential target, getting in the cross hairs of a drone being flown by a 12-year-old kid who's gotten bored with playing Grand Theft Auto V...and has upped the ante. Yikes! But...not to worry. Despite centuries of bad behavior, surely we humans will religiously observe the five FAA restrictions noted above.”

Whew!

The interview ended on that upbeat note. Santa had to continue attaching crappy gifts to his fleet of drones, with less than two weeks before Christmas. This year, there will be no sound of sleigh bells and dancing deer on your rooftop. What sound will you hear?

It will be the sound of your responsible neighbor, Larry Kowalski, flying a big kite with a four-hundred foot string in a snowy wind. This way, Larry will know precisely how far up he can fly his new drone without pissing off the FAA. Why? Because he's responsible. Because, in today's world, everyone is responsible.

IF you’re among the 2 or 3 doubters who think Larry Kowalski is a reckless, feather-brained nitwit who would refuse to fly a kite to an exact altitude of 400 feet for measuring purposes and public safety, then you may be on board with this pessimistic vision of our drone invasion. See previous post below (scroll down slightly).

PS: From Sunday, December 13 to Thursday, December 17, my thriller EXIT will be free on Amazon. What's it about? Drones. Click HERE for description, reviews, and download link. And, yes, EXIT has far less whimsy than this blog.

drones -- the new locusts?

2015-11-17T07:30:00.000-08:00

Drones. UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles). The new locusts?

In the legendary TV series, Kung Fu, Caine, the wandering monk, was nicknamed "grasshopper" by his Master. Who wouldn't want to be called a locust? At any rate, do you recall this exchange:

"If you make me mad, your ass is grass."

- the Grasshopper

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Young Caine: I hear the water, I hear the birds.

Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?

Caine: No.

Po: Do you hear the grasshopper, which is at your feet?

Caine: Old man, how is it that you hear these things?

Po: Young man, how is it that you do not?

Now imagine Caine in California next year. He still has his satchel, but now sports red shorts and a white tee. He may be a wandering monk, but he also has a wandering eye. As they say, "He who travels fastest, travels alone." But even Caine gets lonely sometimes. Hence, he and this high-stepping lady are at Big Sur, catching rays at the beach. Until...

What's a monk to do?

Imagine this updated exchange:

Master Po: Close your eyes. What do you hear?

Young Caine: I hear birds. No, I hear a plague of locusts. Robot locusts. I hear the sound of major guano hitting the fan.

Po: Do you hear your own heartbeat?

Caine: It sounds like a jackhammer. I'm petrified.

Po: Do you hear the grasshoppers, which are at your feet?

Caine: Feet? They're in my face, over my head. They're flying up my swim trunks. They're everywhere. I see a freakin' swarm of mechanical locusts. I see the end of life as we know it. I see a dark mass flying over the horizon. Here they...ahhhhhh...

For now, forget military drones. Think: commercial drones. UAVs. Uninvited Aerial Voyeurs.

Peekaboo!

One of the unintended consequences of commercial drones is that they will remove boredom from our lives. Once they start showing up outside our windows, above our cars, or invading our chimneys, a whole new dimension of excitement awaits us. Imagine a drone the size of a pizza pie slipping inside the local supermarket, and chasing you down aisle five. Imagine it knocking boxes, cans and bottles off the shelves. Imagine getting hit with corn flakes and ketchup while slipping on spilled pickles as you flee for your life.

Imagine slipping on a dill pickle and taking a header onto the floor. You roll over on your back, look up. The drone is circling in for the kill, swooping past a box of macaroni. You grab a jar of spaghetti sauce off the bottom shelf and fling it at the drone, but misfire. And your last thought is: "I am about to die because of a dill pickle."

Think it can't happen? Within the last year we've seen, among other incidents, small drones drop drugs and porn onto prison yards, Mexican cartels move product across the border, and a small drone crash onto the White House lawn.

Lord have mercy.

Pretty much everything in this blog is a stretch, so why stop now? I can easily see a parallel between commercial drones and a plague of locusts. As the FAA opens up restrictions, commercial drone use will soar. The sky will be increasingly filled with birdlike robots. One hopes the National Audubon Society will send a heads-up memo to their flock: "Dear Birds. Sadly, you are the low-income residents of the sky. You are non-tax-paying moochers consuming our garbage. You are about to be displaced by drones carrying cargo for profit and mayhem. Y'all screwed."

Drones seen through car windshield in downtown Cleveland, Ohio.

The drone plague is underway. Crop-sprayers can't stop them. Spraying pesticides from the air and at ground level can't stop them. Someone, please, call Pest Control. As for the loss of personal privacy? Yikes! Then again, privacy is dead. But drones will be dancing on its grave. This blog, The Museum of Sudden Disappearances, is dedicated to the illusion of privacy.

This unsettling photo was sent to me today by a concerned reader from a large American city, which shall go unnamed. According to the sender, it was taken last week from the rooftop of her high-rise building.

The new urban skyline.

Can it get any worse? Yes, it can. Another concerned reader sent this unnerving photo last week.

Is your town next?

Which city is it? Hint: the city that's no longer on the map. Brothers and sisters, this city is totally gone. No way this city survived a massive plague of commercial drones. Note the church steeple pictured at the bottom. One can scarcely imagine what the congregants must've thought, peering through the stained glass windows and seeing a dark trail of madness descending onto the city.

We live in uncertain, knee-knocking times. Here at the blog, what do we advise? The obvious.

RUN!

P.S. My recent thriller, EXIT, is on sale this week (November 18-24) for 99 cents. It's about, yup, drones. Suspense with a touch of dark humor. Reviewers have likened it to the TV series, The Twilight Zone, and also Black Mirror.

This click-happy cover is the exit to my EXIT Amazon page.

P.P.S. Here's a link to a recent interview with Rod Serling regarding EXIT. Rod came back from the beyond, the zone. He brought his unique (terrifying) perspective concerning the impact of drones on today's world. In short, welcome to...deet deet...deet deet...deet deet...deet deet...the Twilight Zone.

cell phone vs. phone booth (part 2)

2015-05-30T16:36:00.000-07:00

This post is Part 2 of “cell phone vs. phone booth” by our (vastly misunderstood) contributor, “Jurassic Jim” Fleetwood, embattled host of the U-turn Time Machine Show. Jim’s first post can be found here.

Why Bees & Telephone Booths are Disappearing

by Jurassic Jim Fleetwood

The news is not good.

Each day, over two billion cell-phone addicts are exposed to electromagnetic radiation. True or false? You decide. Here’s a happy customer who just bought an iPhone and is calling his girlfriend as his brain explodes. Does this look like a health hazard to you? Did you ever see the movie, The Fly, starring Jeff Goldblum? Watch it again. Two minutes into the movie, Jeff calls Geena Davis on his cell. Shortly thereafter, he turns into a fly. Coincidence?

Health hazard? What makes you say that?

“Bees are the most important pollinators of our fruits and vegetables and flowers and crops...More than one third of the world’s crop production is dependent on bee pollination.” – Marla Spivak, American entomologist, and Distinguished McKnight University Professor at the University of Minnesota

Remember this guy?

“A dial tone sounds like a buzzing bee. Coincidence? Or a warning of environmental collapse?” - Jim Fleetwood, Distinguished Host of the U-turn Time Machine Show

What's the difference between this and a polar bear?

No difference. They're both screwed.

Be honest. A phone booth is a cozy, sidewalk meditation-center where you can close the (admittedly filthy) glass door, shut out the ceaseless tumult of passersby, and collect your deranged thoughts before buzzing your soul mate, moms, pops—or the loathsome leech who spotted you at a club last week. Yes, you had made the mistake of standing still by the dance floor for more than three seconds. The leech detected you by scent (a $2 bottle of amber romance mist) and sound vibrations (your cell phone buzzed). The leech dropped from a bar stool, splatted onto the floor, and slithered toward you like an inchworm with (egads!) a strawberry daiquiri.

Good grief. How many times have you seen this horny dude on the dance floor. Imagine this puny putz oozing your way, and sucking on this pathetic drink? He's the Daiquiri Desperado. Imagine him holding up his cell and taking an unapproved picture of you, while lisping, "Yo, baby, my name ith Thlick. Ya wanna danth? Ya wanna kith me? Wanna thlither to my car and take a thelfie with my thell phone?"

The best protection against a leech is to cover up and use insect repellent. Or call the stalking, bloodsucking worm from a phone booth, and say, “Get the ***k (heck?) outa my life! I got a quarter in my pocket. You are one coin away from me calling the cops.”

Be honest. Ambiance is key. Holding a Samsung Galaxy S6 (the name alone may trigger incontinence) jammed into your ear while surrounded by perverted eavesdroppers in a corporate elevator doesn’t cut it. When you need to get your groove on, to knuckle up the leech and threaten his life, nothing beats a booth. Nothing. You know it. I know it.

We all know it.

If a phone felony is your game plan--verbal assault, homicidal threats--head to the freakin' booth and dial up the leech on a trusty landline with zero Caller ID. Let leech know who's calling the shots, running the show. His stalker days are over. Move from booth to booth, street to street. Threaten his life. Threaten to kick him right square in the daiquiris unless he disappears. In no time he'll be a puddle of pee. And you will reclaim your life.

Thanks to the booth. How do you spell "justice?" B-o-o-t-h. How do you spell "freedom from perverts and stalkers?" B-o-o-t-h. How do you spell "Zen Meditation Temple for Stratospheric Consciousness?" P-h-o-n-e B-o-o-t-h.

Then the 21st century reared its ugly head. Clinical depression skyrocketed. And basically Satan got to check one in the win column.

Once cell phones arrived, the booths, like dodo birds, were easy prey. Dodos once thrived on the island of Mauritius. Booths once thrived on the island of Manhattan, New York. According to the United Nations Environmental Assembly, phone booths, which were endemic to urban areas worldwide for decades, now face imminent extinction. In Manhattan, once mottled with booths on the street, was down to four by 2010. By 2014, two booths were snuffed out by drunk drivers who were texting, and one was attacked with a tire iron by an overzealous Samsung cell phone employee.

One booth remains. One. Tick tock. Once that goes, that’s it. Booths cannot breed, folks.

Who’s to blame? Start with these Four Horsemen of the Phonapocalypse: Samsung, Apple, Huawei, Lenovo. Cell phone assassins. Enablers of global blather that leads to Social Climate Change. Peace and Quiet extinction. Telephone Tourette’s.

It gets worse. Nature abhors a vacuum. As the booth vanishes, what takes it place? What’s appeared across the urban landscape? Same size, same shape. Dear God…this:

How depressing is this?

Porta-Potty. Looks like a booth (occasionally smells like a booth). Gosh, what progress. Hurray for cell phones. What an improvement. It uplifts me...I soar, I sing, I text. Even astronauts are in on it.

One small potty for man,

One giant leap for mankind

Depressed yet? Here's another. I hope a loaded gun isn't within reach of your armchair.

Do Porta-Pottys breed?

What's your best guess?

Bees, food chain, phone booths, privacy. Going, going, gone. Replaced by genetically modified crops, nonstop blather, exploding brains, and Porta Johns. Grim? Duh? Fortunately there’s a way out. You can get this new app for your smart phone. Here's what it looks like.

Place beside smart phone, pull ring, run.

Well, I mean, doesn't this just say it all? Pictured below, five psychopaths attacking a phone booth. Who are these thugs? Samsung's team of hitmen caught in a covert op. Mission? Destroy the few remaining booths. Predatory capitalism at its worst. Total disregard for our culture's treasures. A triumph of mindless aggression. The uglification of our world. Thanks, boys. I no longer have a compelling reason to get up in the morning. Gracias. Sincerely. Thanks for turning my world into a massive eyesore.

Is there no shame?

You'd think someone with a shred of decency and a cell phone would've called the police? But...no-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. The Thugocracy reigns supreme. So, let's get back to our little flying friend. The one we don't see anymore. Let's get completely depressed. Let's get so depressed that we collapse, and are forced to drag our numb bodies across the floor by our elbows, while chanting: "We live in the best of all possible centuries. Hurray for the 21st century."

Who's the genius who told these guys, "Buzz off?"

This is what happened. The horrendous Law of Unintended Consequences.

The advent of cell phones put phone booths on the endangered species list. Booths are nearly extinct now. Cell phones and cell towers are everywhere, emitting radiation. Brains are cooked, minds destroyed, dreams trampled, which may explain the widespread celebrity status of the Kardashians. Unfortunately, the radiation also KO'd the bees. Honey bees are disappearing at an alarming rate. Zillions. Every freaking time someone makes a call on their cell ("Yo, Brenda? It's me, Joey, the hunky hunkster..."), a bee gets radiation poisoning and drops through the air like a rock. Bang, gone, see ya. So, you may ask, "Holy shit, Jim. What will happen to our food chain?" This: bang, gone, see ya.

It gets worse. See this guy here? The guy who hasn't had a date in 20 years?

Obscene phone caller working his magic.

This asthmatic weasel spends each night calling orphanages, convents and convalescent homes, sharing his breathy objectives with orphans, nuns and the elderly. Each time he picks up his cell phone, a bee dies. Each time he asks a nun, "What are you wearing?" -- another link breaks in the food chain. Global hunger spreads like an Exxon oil spill in coastal waters.

What nerve. The obscene phone caller lives to see another day. The bumble bee takes the hit. Are you serious? Each time you hear a dial tone buzz, think of a bee pleading for its life, begging you to use a landline.

Yes, bees and booths, together, over the cliff. We're all going to get snuffed out, one call at a time. Why not call the local funeral home, make an appointment, get it over with. Cause of death: "cellicide." Or: "I was diagnosed with incurable Nokia."

Wait. Stop. I'm not a buzzkiller. Here's the good news. What priceless treasure have we moderns gotten in return for the mass execution of bees?

This:

Inventor of iPhone at Apple Headquarters

Progress. Oh, yippee.

Bring back the booths.

Later,
Jim Fleetwood

[to be continued]

cell phone vs. phone booth - by Jurassic Jim Fleetwood

2015-05-16T12:27:00.002-07:00

Here at The Museum of Sudden Disappearances, we would like to thank "Jurassic Jim" Fleetwood for today's guest post.

Jim sent this impassioned plea from "parts unknown," his whereabouts still a mystery. We are always delighted (relieved) to hear from him. As readers of the Jurassic Jim thrillers already know, Jim is a bit out-of-step with the times. Not that he cares. Among other concerns, Jim doesn't understand why so many wonderful and beautiful things must fade and disappear from our world, and be replaced by things of lesser value. Perhaps he has a point. You decide.

Posted is the initial salvo of his lengthy dispatch, pictures included. The rest will soon follow. What's it about? It's a heartfelt celebration of phone booths, and their unwarranted disappearance. Some say Jim occasionally values passion over logic, heart over head. No argument here. Stay tuned for the next installment.

Herewith, his spirited missive--a celebration of the obsolete telephone booth.

Sincerely,

Tom Davidson
Museum Blog CEO (janitor)

* * *

MUSEUM READERS...WARNING: I urge you to turn off your phone before reading this. This is a cell-free zone.

Phone booth...or meditation chamber?

Going, Going, Gone.....the Telephone Booth

iPhone

uPhone

WeAllPhone

Welcome to iArmageddon

What's iArmageddon? It's the final battle between cell phones and humans who crave 10 seconds of peace and quiet per day.

Yes. iArmageddon. Where Apple iPhones blast our brains, erode meditative silence, and pave the way for the end of the world through nonstop chatter. Holy crap. What's that I see? Storm clouds are gathering on the Verizon.

[NOTE: Nostradamus, the cranky French seer, coined the word "iArmageddon" 500 years ago when he warned that "...round Earth is like a round, rotten Apple, and endtimes will worm through its core." But hey, to be fair, this dude said a lot of sketchy stuff.]

You ask: When did the world lose its mind? When this device appeared on the marketplace -- a plastic barnacle welded to everyone's head. What exactly does iArmageddon look like? You're holding it in your hand. This addictive tool (think crack with apps), the size of a hand grenade, is dropping the curtain on the 21st century.

Let's cut to the chase (before you get another annoying call coming in). Picture it. A dark and stormy night. You're alone downtown at midnight.

Will I get home alive?

You suddenly see a "lumpy thing" barreling your way like a gut-shot bear in the rain. It's half-human, half-metrosexual. When it screeches, it sounds like a tow truck having sex with an aluminum garbage can. You attempt to escape on the wet pavement, but slip and fall in your $900 hi-top sneakers with goofy zippers. The lumpy monster closes in. It smells worse than a sauerkraut fart, but never as bad as blue cheese. What to do? Surrender. If you try to whale on the monster with your puny cell phone, you will die of humiliation. Once your self-respect takes a lethal blow, it's over. If you must die, die with dignity.

This dinky dude pictured below? Be honest. Does this little puke look like he can stop the lumpy monster?

No freakin' way. His batteries will die while your ass is on the line. Guaranteed. He's not a cell phone; he's an accessory to murder. Look at him. Is that the face of remorse? I don't think so. Not by a long shot. You call for help in the middle of the night, downtown, and his power goes out. Screw him. Put him in prison where he belongs, a cell phone in a cell. Stick him in with gen pop. Turn the tables. Make him call for help. 911. See how he likes it. Make him spend all day pressing numbers on his little chest as he runs for his life from the inmates. Force him to listen to a silly ringtone, maybe Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called to Say I Love You." When his batteries die, he can get a taste of his own medicine. Hey, the little puke had it coming. He never gave you any consideration.

WAIT.

Cheer up. There's an alternative. Hit the rewind button on the above scenario. Ready?

Same horrendous crap. Dark and stormy night, etc. One crucial difference. See that rectangular box on the left side of the photo below? It suggests a glass and steel coffin? That's your shelter from the storm--the obsolete thing at which the unappreciative world sneered. Ready? Let's go.

Holy crap. The lumpy monster closes in. You turn on the dark street, spot the phone booth, dive in. Slam shut the shatterproof glass door. You're sealed inside. Enraged, the Lumpy One batters the door to no avail. Behind the glass, you laugh, flip him the finger. You call the police. No dime? No sweat. You buzz the operator, say, "Yo, help, now." Within minutes you hear a siren. Lumpy freaks. Lumpy legs it out of there. End of story.

Saved by a phone booth. How do you spell sanctuary? Easy: B-O-O-T-H, baby.

Phone booths.

Save lives.

Bring back.

I await.

Phone booths can also be used as fallout shelters.

Later,
Jim Fleetwood

click HERE for Part 2:

"Why Bees & Telephone Booths are Disappearing"