Blackout. The house is eerily quiet. A flashlight casts shadowy illumination that makes everything unfamiliar. I’ve twisted the switch on a lamp, but I can’t be sure whether it’s on or off. I twist it a few more times then lose count. Was it an odd or even number of twists? Will it come on when the power comes back? There’s nothing to do but sit and think about lamps.
As a kid did you ever read the story of Aladdin and see a picture of his lamp and wonder what was wrong with it? It didn’t have a shade or a bulb, and where were you supposed to plug it in?
In second grade I’d b e even more confused when I read the story of Diogenes who took a lamp out in broad daylight. The story said he was looking for an honest man. I thought he must have been looking for outlets because you can only carry a lamp so far before the cord runs out. Later I would understand that he was making a point that an honest man is so hard to find that one must be sought with a lamp in the daylight. When I first read the story I thought the honest man he was looking for would be the one who’d ask, “Why are you carrying a lamp in broad daylight? Are you trying to sell it or are you just some kind of idiot?”
I think Diogenes would have been impressed by what a wise child I was.
Crack. I’ve stepped on a snail. I really try to avoid this, but accidents happen. I feel guilty because I like snails. I’ve always liked snails. When I was a kid I kept them as pets sometimes. I drove librarians nuts asking for books about snails, and I was disappointed in the lack of attention given to snails on the shows I watched, except for this one short Sesame Street cartoon:
Sesame Street was supposed to be educational so it bugged me when they tried to pass off blatantly false information. And I knew almost everything about this short snail poem was wrong:
Snails come out when it’s damp, especially when it’s rainy. And at night. They don’t go out for a “walk” on “fine sunny days”. If they did they’d end up dried snails.
At least the last part about a snail not having to go back was correct based on my observations: snails would venture a long way from where they started and wouldn’t necessarily go back.
The problem is snails don’t carry their homes on their backs. One of the reasons they come out when it’s raining is because the nooks and crannies and little holes where they live get flooded. That shell is not a home. It’s a protective cover and part of their bodies. Snails must look at us and say, “Wait, your shell is inside your body? Under your skin? That’s weird.” Or at least they would if they looked at us and thought about us. I can’t fault Sesame Street for passing taffy when I’m anthropomorphizing snails.
Another thing I learned about snails just by watching is that if you put two in a terrarium sooner or later they’ll start riding around on each others’ shells, and then you’ll have a cluster of tiny pearlescent eggs in a little hole in the dirt.
Later very patient librarian would find me a book and I’d read that snails are hermaphrodites. This didn’t really bother me, and I even thought it would make life easier if humans were too. On fine sunny days when couples went out for a trek at the end of the date they’d both pick up the check.
So it was 1995, and the place where I worked had just started using e-mail. We had a program called Pegasus, which I’m tickled to see, is still going. It was supposed to be a work tool, but its real purpose quickly became clear: to share jokes. A short time later I discovered I could create email groups and have the names hidden so the recipients wouldn’t see each other’s addresses. So I created a group.
Twenty years have gone by in a flash. I’ve read somewhere that the average blog only lasts three years. If you never come here again drop by on April 1, 2025. I intend to destroy the average.
In the meantime…there will be the book. I have no idea when, but it will be a collection of humorous pieces and short stories, because there’s nothing publishers love more as you can tell by the fact that such books always end up in the three-for-a-dollar remainder pile.
I do at least have a title, which is a good start.
Subtitles include:
Never pick apart a golf ball or it will explode and other lies our parents told us.
The true story of a boy and his aardvark.
Don’t pick up this book—you don’t know where it’s been.
Chuffed, Naff, Barmy, Wanker, Git, Bollocks, And Other Words I’d Use Constantly If I Were British.
Contains Material Not Included In Previous Editions.
A shoe, a canoe, and a didgeridoo.
Or It Will Be If I Ever Get Around To Writing It
A post-Freudian analysis of Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood as examined through a Barthesian dialectical lens.
A helpful guide to just read the damn book already.
I don’t know if it really started on April 1, 1995—I don’t remember the exact date, frankly—but it’s close enough. And I always wanted to have a birthday in the spring. My real birthday is December 20, . And I have to give full credit to my mother who always made sure my birthday was celebrated as its own event in spite of its proximity to Christmas. There were advantages to having a birthday at that time of year—including being a Sagittarius. I remember the first time I read the description of a Sagittarius. Three things stood out:
-Loves the outdoors
-Loves to dress up in costumes
-Scatterbrained
Check, check, and mate. I’ve spent the rest of my life avoiding reading anything about astrology because I suspect the description of a Leo is completely different but would fit me just as well.
April 1st is also the birthday of Lon Chaney. Apparently loving to dress up in costumes is an Aries thing as well.
Thanks to Scott MacLean who created the original website, and Jeff Goebel of Frogstar, both of whom put an incredible amount of work into rebuilding this site as a blog I could call home. They created a fantastic design which I immediately tore to pieces. This was not an editorial comment. It’s just that I’ve lived with dogs long enough to know that the only way to make the yard yours is to pee on every tree.And now…let loose the tarantulas of foolishness! Here are videos I’ve made on my real birthday for the past three years.
I need a new swimsuit. Some people call them “swim trunks”, but to me a trunk is either the nose of an elephant or a wooden box in the attic that holds old clothes, maybe a few recipes, and a priceless Vermeer that’s been missing for centuries. It’s not really a suit either. I think the term “suit” really only describes the full body suits that Olympic swimmers wear. What I really need is a new pair of swim shorts–a pair of shorts with mesh underwear sewn in. I never really understood why they needed that mesh underwear until my wife and I were in Long Beach, California one December. I’d forgotten to pack my swim shorts to use in the hotel pool, so I walked up the street a few blocks to a big box store. I couldn’t find the swim shorts so I asked a woman who worked there where they were.
“Do you know what time of year it is?” she asked.
“Have you been outside lately?” I replied. And I had a point. It was seventy-five degrees outside. But I knew I couldn’t argue with marketing, so I bought a pair of running shorts. Fortunately I was alone in the hotel’s rooftop pool because I soon discovered that soaking wet running shorts leave very little to the imagination.
My current swim shorts fit me well enough, but the string that’s supposed to keep them from slipping down and causing indecent exposure keeps coming loose. Not only does this interrupt my rhythm but I’m always a little nervous standing in the shallow end retying it. I can just imagine some small child in the family area looking over and saying, “Mommy, why does that man have his hands in his pants?”
I love to swim. I’m no athlete but it doesn’t matter. When I angle my body downward in the deep end and swim dolphin-like, when I go so deep I can touch the bottom, all my problems are gone. And then I surface and take a breath, and for a moment the whole world is as clear as the air filling my lungs. Even better is when I swim in the ocean, skimming along the sandy bottom. Fish and sometimes stingrays dart ahead of me. Once in a while I even hear the clicks and whistles of real dolphins, and I feel connected to them.
Blackout. The house is eerily quiet. A flashlight casts shadowy illumination that makes everything unfamiliar. I’ve twisted the switch on a lamp, but I can’t be sure whether it’s on or off. I twist it a few more times then lose count. Was it an odd or even number of twists? Will it come on when the power comes back? There’s nothing to do but sit and think about lamps.
. And I have to give full credit to my mother who always made sure my birthday was celebrated as its own event in spite of its proximity to Christmas. There were advantages to having a birthday at that time of year—including being a Sagittarius. I remember the first time I read the description of a Sagittarius. Three things stood out:
