Metaphor

Here is the epitaph that Benjamin Franklin wrote for himself in 1728. It was saved and used even though he didn’t die until 1790:

The Body
Of
Benjamin Franklin
Printer
(Like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out
And stripped of its lettering and gilding)
Lies here, food for worms.
But the work shall not be lost.
For it will (as he believes) appear once more
In a new and more elegant edition
Revised and corrected
by
The Author.

One of My Freedom Fighter Friends

Recently I thought of my friend, Jim G. We became acquainted when I was politically active. He has been active in leftist politics all over this country for several decades. Jim had a very admirable grasp on the spirit of political struggling. Many people who lean the way I do have no trouble grasping that trade unions are vital to keep management from abusing and lowering the standard of living of the workers. Few argue that the struggle involves rich people whose power is in their money, and poor people whose power is in their numbers. The way for the ruling class to get over is to help us divide ourselves up into isolated groups so we don’t avail ourselves of our power. Hatred of one group for other groups is a good way to do that. Not everyone gets, however, that fighting racism and bigotry is essential if working people are to maintain their standard of living.

This principle is axiomatic to Jim. And when I say that he fought racism and bigotry, I mean exactly that. He has many interesting tales to tell about his adventures defending his beliefs. Here is one I heard:

Jim is a member of an organization that publishes material and supports counter demonstrations against hate groups who commit hate crimes. He is hip to the skin head music and how it is designed to lure young people into blaming other races for everything that goes wrong. Immigrants are taking our jobs; Jews are controlling the economy; blacks are responsible for all the crime, that sort of thing. Getting people to hate each other for any reason you care to create is useful, but if you can incite bigotry on the basis of some perceived economic threat, like the stealing of jobs, that is real hard to break through.

Jim’s group helped sponsor an event where a speaker was engaged to tell a largely upper middle class Jewish group what he suffered during the Holocaust and how he survived the concentration camps. He was in his eighties when the speaking engagement occurred. Jim’s comrades got word somehow that a small party of skin heads intended to raid the event, which was taking place in the basement of a school auditorium or something, I think, and to try to knock some heads around. As a precaution, Jim’s group assigned the speaker a bodyguard. Jim was posted at the door to look out for trouble. As the speaker and the bodyguard were walking from the parking lot toward the building, five or six hooligans intervened and began summarily beating up this elderly Jewish man. Jim ran inside where people were milling about, beginning to take their seats. He yelled, “I need some help out here! I need some help right now!” No one moved a muscle. A few peered out the window and saw the attack, but no one rose to help. Someone at some point called the police, but Jim, the bodyguard and the old man were left alone to fight off the attackers who outnumbered them two to one.

Jim said they did well. Jim, as I indicated, has been in a few scrapes defending his beliefs. What surprised him, though (and me), is that the old man got in pretty many good licks himself. He held his own against these bullies who were old enough to be his great-grandchildren.

The skin heads were losing by the time the police got there. Jim was sitting on one of them. A couple more had fled. Witnesses were able to straighten the police out on who were the good guys and who were not. The cops took out the trash.

Japanese Prison Camps and the ER

It has come to my attention that emergency room workers are not at all faced with the same problems depicted on “ER.” Chris’ sister, Julie, was an emergency room nurse in Indianapolis for several years. The hospital was in the city and one would presume that she would be treating a plethora of gunshot wounds, stab wounds and drug overdoses more than anything else. Not necessarily. Julie reports that overwhelmingly the lion’s share of cases she saw involved a variety of foreign objects jammed up where, as it were, the sun don’t shine. There has been everything from light bulbs to wrist watches, Coke bottles to small furry animals that have made their homes in someone’s hiney. Anything even vaguely phallic has been tried. Julie says the worst part is keeping a straight face during the fantastic stories that patients will concoct to explain how this occurred. The part that mystifies me is this: these folks with the anal retentive fetish could easily go into a sex toy store and purchase an item designed for this purpose and which presumably would be much easier to extract when the festivities were concluded than, say, a light bulb would be. (Lord! Can you imagine what someone would face if it broke?!) But they apparently feel that shopping at Dr. John’s Love Land is somehow MORE humiliating than explaining to emergency room personnel that one has a flashlight lodged in one’s rectum.

All of this is terribly funny to me while it is tragic. I know I should not judge people if I have not walked a mile in their mocassins, but I guess I never will. I hereby declare henceforth and for all time that my bottom is off limits to all flashlights, baseball bats, light bulbs or frozen sausages. One er nurse herself destroyed her sphincter by continually inserting frozen sausages. So much so that she would be on duty in the er and suddenly soil herself because she no longer had control.

One patient arrived at Julie’s hospital DOA. He was wearing a red lace teddy and high heels and had a vibrator protruding from his arse. He was a retired army colonel who had had a heart attack during “war games.” His wife didn’t seem to mind the embarrassing condition in which he had been found. She was largely concerned with having the corpse removed from the hallway. I guess she was expecting company.

While we’re on the topic, Chris disclosed another tragic story of a woman who delivered a healthy baby at the hospital, and a butt. There was a second undeveloped fetus accompanying the healthy one and all that developed of the other one was a butt. I am not able to describe or imagine what a butt looks like scooting down the birth canal all by itself, but that’s how the story goes. The parents of the baby and the butt were not upset by the tragedy. The baby was healthy and I guess they were never told of a second fetus, so it wasn’t a really big deal to them. But it is somehow disturbingly reminiscent of a 1950s B movie, or the cover of a grocery store newspaper.

Julie has experienced many horrible things during her er tenure. Abscesses the size of marshmallows that stink enough to make one sick—that sort of thing. There are many more stories, but they are disgusting.

My friend, Chris, has interesting interests. Most men in his demographic bracket are interested in sports, cars, music, that kind of thing. Chris is interested in Japanese prison camps. He talks about them all the time and shares with me anecdotal information about life inside one.

During World War II there were a number of American and European service women who were detained in Japanese prison camps. When their monthly cycles were on, these women were each given a rag about 10 or 12 inches square. They were told to embroider their initials in the rag so that each woman would get her own back after laundering. Laundering consisted of sending some poor helper around the camp with a bucket of luke warm water. The soiled rags were thrown into the water and swished around a bit, wrung out and returned to their owners. Of course each woman only had to endure this level of filth for 24 months or so. After 2 years the effects of the malnutrition and horribly unsanitary living conditions would set in and the women stopped menstruating all together anyway. Makes me feel grateful whenever I drive past a Walgreens.

I spoke to Chris recently and asked for elaboration about the report about his sister’s emergency room chore of having to remove assorted phallic devices from people’s poop shoots. He emphasized that, invariably, the patient claims the incident occurred when he/she accidentally sat on the offending object. This is how one young lady explained being violated by a Ball Park frank which then broke off inside her. She was unable to remove it unaided. I remarked to Chris that this is completely plausible; I often sit on my dinner plate in the nude and later find a bratwurst lodged somewhere I didn’t intend. It’s a constant worry. He agreed, citing the proliferation of items that are always “plunging” up his butt.

Why, it’s a wonder any of us can ever stroll through a hardware store in peace without some rogue hand tool assaulting us, or through any ordinary grocery store without having to fight off rogue zucchinis and cucumbers that would attack us from every side.

Fermentation

I moved back in with my dad after my divorce, and the experience was good for both of us. He was less lonely, and I certainly was. One feature of my father's taste that will always stay in my memory was his fondness for pineapple-grapefruit juice. He always had some on hand. To lengthen its refrigerator life, he would pour it out of the can it came in and into a glass bottle with a screw-on cap. That way, it never tasted like the can, and was easier to pour.

Not long after I moved back home, I introduced him to Laura Haskell, and they were constant companions until she died. When she got sick with cancer, he moved to her house to care for her and left me to take care of our house. Me and the pineapple-grapefruit juice.

Trouble is, I didn't care for pineapple-grapefruit juice. It sat in the fridge for a long while, unmolested by me. I never drank it. I never opened it.

One day I came home from work, opened the fridge and found the result of the life threatening disaster that I had averted. The juice bottle had exploded. The juice had fermented, generating gas pressure inside the sealed bottle and on that particular day, the pressure exceeded the bottle's strength and an explosion occurred inside the refrigerator.

Tiny shards of glass were stuck to the inside of the fridge, glued on by dried juice. The shards covered much of the refrigerator walls, and all of the other items within. It was a horrible mess, and I took great care cleaning it up as the shards were tiny and very sharp.

I have thought many times in the years that have past what would have become of me if fate had dealt me a very bad hand and I had opened the fridge at the moment of critical mass. And I shudder. And I am thankful.

More from About 1996

When at the studio about a year ago, Carl received a call from a man named Bill Roberts who had heard of Carl, we don’t know how. He wanted photos taken of his karate students and his studio. Carl invited him to studio to consult on project. Bill & Carl got friendly, but not too friendly, and Bill ended up bringing his good bud Rudy over one night when I was at the studio with Carl. I helped hostess the pair while Carl took portraits of them. I did not think much of them. They appeared to be young undisciplined men whose main goal in life is to hunt pussy. In fact, they repeatedly invited Carl to go hunt with them reasoning that he could say he is a talent agent and they’d all get over on women because of it. Carl did not participate, but Bill and Rudy emphasized how stupid women are for believing the completely bogus lies they would tell to get the women into bed. They were disdainful of all women because all of them are so stupid.

You are about to see these two men DEFINE stupid.

Anyway, Carl took the pictures and Rudy flirted with me, and Bill was more respectful, but still gawked at me because, well lets face it, I’m female, and that seems the only criterion.

There were other studio visits that I was not present for. During one, Bill brought a middle aged woman and a homeless teenager whom the woman was helping out. They invited Carl to go out partying with them, but he declined. The woman ostensibly was going to let Sarah, the teenager, stay at her house since Sarah had been booted out of wherever she had called home, as she was penniless and lost. She is also dark-haired, slender and petite, with the face of an angel and the IQ of a paper clip.

A short time later, Bill called and reported to Carl that the woman had become tired of Sarah and had kicked her out. Since Bill was the only one Sarah claimed to know, she called him and begged for help.

Sarah ended up staying at Bill’s karate studio, and I do mean staying. He locked her in when he left for the day and only let her out when he came back in the evening to have sex with her. Not to be controlled, Sarah welcomed Rudy daily. Rudy climbed through the one unlocked window to get in to have sex with Sarah also. Sarah told Carl (whom she began phoning because she had nothing else to do) that it was real cool that she was getting over on Bill with Rudy. Later it was discovered that Bill and Rudy were laughing at her for being so stupid because, of course, Bill was sharing her with Rudy. She remained a prisoner and a sex slave until she became pregnant by Bill (probably, but who knows?) and he paid for her abortion. She promptly got pregnant again. Soon after, Bill tired of her and dumped her at the door of some woman in South St. Louis who helps out pregnant homeless teenagers.

Recently Sarah gave birth and Bill promised her and her aunt with whom she has just found a home, that he intends to take care of her and of the baby and see to it that they have everything they need. He also wants to be a good dad.

This, however, won’t transpire. Last week Bill and Rudy and a third man, Derek, I think, were arrested for having abducted a 27-year-old woman outside a night club in East St. Louis. They rendered her unconscious with a stun gun, took her to north St. Louis where they raped her and beat her. Evidently they raped her not only with their bodies, but an assortment of foreign objects. Jane Doe is very very messed up. These stupid bastards abducted her in her own car and then parked it over night in front of the home of one of them. They were all arrested the next day.

The newspaper said that Derek was the only one of the three who did not sexually assault Jane, but Bill told Sarah when he phoned her from jail that he was the one who had left her alone in that way. But he is in the trouble because it was his stun gun. His bond is $75,000. The bonds on the other two are $100,000 and $150,000. We don’t know if this is true or if Bill is lying to protect his image with Sarah. He’s that stupid.

Bill’s mom told Sarah that if he gets a really fantastic lawyer who will achieve the optimum possible plea bargain, Bill will only face 25 years in prison. We don’t know details, but Bill apparently admitted to Sarah or her aunt that they did things to this woman that were unspeakable.

I am very upset about this and have not been able to get it off my mind since I heard about it. Sarah’s aunt said to Carl, “I can’t believe I let this person in my home!” I can relate. I can’t believe I let him in my studio and sat there and chatted with him.

I do think this: The first earmark of unbridled stupidity was defined when these two knuckleheads revealed a disrespectful view of women. Whenever you allow yourself to believe that any woman is stupid for going to bed with you, then you must not think much of yourself, huh?

Add to that, if women are all stupid, especially ones that can be seduced, then you disable yourself. If you cut yourself off from the equity that women have in their intellects, dismissing them, and using them as holes, then you disable yourself. Surely there are some stupid women out there. Surely. But there are also stupid men, and these two are poster boys for that group.

I'm completely fine with these cretins spending 25 years or more in prison. The world can do without them. But I've learned a lot from this tale.

Manuscript Excerpt from Winter 1996

As a child I was often forced to go to the Famous Barr department store near our house. (It is now a parking lot.) When I was a very young child and it was near Christmas time, I was taken along with my mother on a shopping trip.

The store was crowded and people were tracking snow inside as they walked and it was melting into puddles near the exits.

We were on our way to the door behind a crowd of shoppers when the fat woman in front of me who was carrying tons of packages, hit one of the puddles. Her feet went straight up, her butt went straight down and her packages went in every direction. She was hurt, I believe.

I, nevertheless, collapsed into a fit of hysterical laughter and ended up falling on the floor next to her, holding my stomach and screaming with fits of mirth.

My mother was acutely embarrassed by my behavior and kept right on walking out the door in hopes that no one would realize I was her kid.

Other forms of slapstick also amused me. My father could be very short-tempered, cruel and impatient. When at the dinner table, he would from time to time drop his fork or knife on the floor and have to get a clean one. Something about the incident tickled me and I would begin to laugh uncontrollabley.

If he were in one of his enraged moods, I would have to leave the room and continue laughing elsewhere in hopes that he wouldn’t know what I was doing. But of course he did.

Once when I was still in a high chair, my mother dropped an egg. I nearly hyperventilated because it was so funny. To this day I lose it whenever an egg falls.


My mother grew up in a small rural community in northern Missouri. On Saturday morning all of the farmers would converge in town. Town amounted to a small strip of ma and pa shops. There was a liquor store, hardware, variety, grocery, and my favorite, the drug store.

The drug store was vintage Norman Rockwell. It had ceiling fans, hexoganal ceramic tiles on the floor and stools where you could sit at the counter and order fountain Cokes and phosphates. It was run by my mother’s cousin and all through my childhood and adulthood, it never changed, although farm failure, unemployment, and the mass exodus to the city has rendered the community a ghost town.

Recently, my mom’s cousin was entertaining her usual group of 3 or 4 out-of-work farmers.
They arrive early in the morning, drink coffee and chat until close, 6 p.m., and go home.

This day, someone remarked that the ceiling was sagging. She said yes, she needed to have that looked at. Then she kicked them out, locked the door and went home. At 6:20 the entire roof collapsed in on the building and within moments it was turned to a pile of dust and rubble. The last in a long strip of hollowed, musty storefront shells —the dark and yawning symbols of decaying rural America—died in this way.

My Ameren Rant

Why is a public utility, such as Ameren, which provides a product that none of us can live without, which we MUST have and must pay for . . . why is such a utility ever allowed to make a profit?? Never mind $123 million in the first quarter of the year. Why is it allowed to make a profit at ALL?

By “profit,” I obviously do not mean monies for upgrading their systems, which are badly needed, and providing salary increases for hard-working staff. But the stockholders and those who sit on their rumps and rake in money are welcome to kiss my ass.

Would we bless the sale of water at $50 a gallon to people who can't
get it any other way? Would that be okay? This is not okay.

We are not obliged to assist huge profitable companies to become
huger and more profitable. Let Lexus and Microsoft charge what they
want. I don't need either product line. But I do need electricity,
and to have my electric rates raised by a utility that is already
making money at an embarrassing rate is wrong on too many levels to
list.

We needn't even consider allowing a rate increase for Ameren. At
this level of profitability, we need a government-mandated
independent auditor to periodically determine exactly how much money
these greedy cretins really need to provide service, and set rates
accordingly. Only in that way can the government act on behalf of
our society.

Don't Tell Me to Have a Happy New Year

Perhaps I have bad karma, or perhaps I have offended some ethereal personality in the non-corporeal realm, but I often feel that many things I try tend to backfire.

Take "Happy New Year," for example. I recall several years ago, when returning to work the day after the holiday, a co-worker breezed by and said that to me. I failed to acknowledge him; I was in a conversation with someone else, but heard him out of the corner of my ear. Then, later the same day, he caught up to me in a hallway and wished it again.

A month later I lost my job. Two months later he lost his. And it has been all downhill ever since.

And it's not just the new year. Don't tell me you are praying for me. That also seems to make things worse. And don't tell me that something really good is going to happen for me very soon. That sort of prophecy will have me hiding my head under the covers, afraid to show my face.

Certainly the converse approach does not work. Don't tell me to have a flat tire, or incur big overdraft charges at the bank, or pick up a virus in hopes that I will enjoy a new car, monetary prosperity and excellent health. It doesn't seem to work that way. I don't know how to advise you, exactly, I'm just saying I don't understand how all of this works, but I am forming a pattern for how it doesn't work.

It has gotten so bad that I have given up praying for an end to poverty and hunger, and for peace on earth. I'm terrified that my negative karma may be a kiss of death for the whole world.

Apparently, I am powerless to control my destiny, but I am free to do the best I can. I'd like to speak up for disadvantaged people, be a good friend to my friends, and stand up for what I believe is right.

And hope for the best.