Whippet, my arse!

In February we adopted two dogs, a bonded pair. The cranky old man of the duo was most definitely, as advertised, a Lahso Apso. The other dog, very pretty and a lot younger, was purportedly a Whippet.

I don't know Poodles from Whippets (other than the Devo song), so I investigated and hired Detective Google to uncover what a Whippet is. 

Hmmm. Nope, no sir, I don't see it! No offense to Whippet worshipers, but c'mon, the dog's kinda got that alien other-worldliness to it, looking at you with those huge extraterrestrial eyes. Brrrrrr. Not like our dog. (Although, come to think of it, she's kinda peculiar in her actions. We bought a seat cover for the living room chair where she likes to hold watch next to the bay window. The cover was accompanied by two hard plastic "noodles" that you tuck into the sides to keep the cover taut. Our dog didn't like the noodles because they went missing. Where she buried them in the house is anyone's guess. But I digress...)

My wife took my intensive Whippet investigation one step further and actually sent off for a doggy DNA test (getting the swab was fun).

The results were shocking. Get this...she's 28% Australian Cattle Dog (which explains why she herds us all over the house, nudging us with her nose), 15% St. Bernard, 13% Australian Shepherd, 8% Siberian Husky, 7% Staffordshire Bull Terrier, 6% American Staffordshire Terrier, and a slew of other breeds I've never even heard of. Nary a hair of a Whippet. However, the DNA company was kind enough to supply us a family chart of what our dog's parents, grandparents, and great grandparents might have looked like. Man, I don't want to go "dog-shaming," but our dog's ancestors got around, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, not only did we not get a Whippet (for which I'm kinda glad), but we got a bonus ear and skin infection along with our dog. Score!

Well, here we are in the dog days of Summer, ready to jump back into our masks because of that pesky Delta variant, so, hey! Why not read a good book? When you're done with that, check out some of my books on my Amazon page.

Camping!

I don't camp. Never have, nor did I believe I ever would. Even in cub scouts I feigned being sick so as to miss a camping trip. And boy, am I glad I did! My fellow cubs came back hornet stung, sun-burnt, and scratching their poison ivy rashes. So it's no wonder I don't fancy myself a camper. 

That is, until a couple of weeks ago. Suddenly--inexplicably--I found myself deep in the mountains of Oklahoma (spittin' distance--as the locals say--from Arkansas) in a cabin in the woods. Horrors! 

How did our pioneering ancestors ever make it under such barbaric circumstances?

Just how had this happened? I dunno, not really. My wife probably told me we were going on this trip with her family while I was knee-deep into a movie or something. Doesn't matter. There I was...camping.

Typical camping activity: Everyone fiddling with their phones

 

Now, my family still claim that I wasn't camping. My father-in-law laughed and told me I never would've made it camping with his father and father-in-law. He's right. After hearing his tale of how he had about froze to death in a tent while deer hunting, I couldn't think of anything less appealing.

I don't EVEN want to know what this strange creature is.

 

"Dear, this is hardly 'camping,'" said my wife.

I said, "But...but...we're in a cabin in the woods! And there's nature stuff, and Dick and Perry, and serial killers, and Deliverance psychos, and lotsa crap surrounding us! We're camping!"

Roughing it around the campfire with a Margarita

 

My sister-in-law added, "Don't forget about the tree-frogs."

"TREE FROGS?" I shrieked, while whirling around on the deck, looking for these insidious creatures to start falling upon me. Just as I don't believe that sticks should walk (a terrifying sight), I'd never heard of such a frightening prospect before. I like my frogs on the ground where I can see them, definitely not waiting to bombard me from the huge trees above.

My nephew wielding weapons so as to fend off the deadly Tree Frogs

 

All week long, my claims of camping were ridiculed. Okay, okay, the cabin had air conditioning and even Wifi, but for God's sake, the signal was really spotty! Talk about roughing it! And sure there were wineries and breweries twenty minutes away to occupy my great outdoors-man daytime activities, but at night, a myriad of critters, varmints, and who-knows-what buzzed, clicked, shrieked, hooted, hawed, cawed, and laughed. Camping!

The great outdoors-man finds himself inside a winery

 

I should count myself lucky, I suppose, as I only had one truly tragic camping mishap. Half asleep one morning, I reached for a tube of toothpaste on the bathroom countertop, squeezed some out, and brushed my teeth. Thinking it tasted..."funny"...I checked the tube. I'd grabbed my bro-in-law's hydrocortisone. More shrieking ensued. Camping.

Just one of the many, many dangers of camping

Inexplicably, the locals seemed to have kinda a crush or something on Bigfoot. Everywhere you looked there were Bigfoot statues, Bigfoot shops, and Bigfoot beer.

Getting chummy with one of the locals

For God's sake, we were in such savage country, the locals even took to eating the Bigfeet (Bigfoots?)! When in Rome, do as the Romans do...We ordered a plate of Bigfoot Balls. While certainly not as ghastly as Rocky Mountain Oysters (nothing is), I imagine there's an entire mountain full of castrated and angry Bigfoot guys roaming around.

So much for the camping tradition of pork and beans

The wildlife wasn't content to stay outdoors either. One look at the room my wife and I shared with our nephews shows the obvious proof that a wild, enraged beast of some sort (maybe a castrated Bigfoot?) went on a rampage strewing clothing and other items everywhere! Camping!

When animals attack!

I was glad to get back to civilization after having braved it in the woods for several nights, living on the edge of danger, and barely escaping with my life. Now that I've actually--finally--been camping, I think I'm pulling up my big boy outdoors man shorts and ready to do it again. Although next time, I'd prefer a cabin with a hot tub. Yeah... Camping!

 

Speaking of Bigfoot, there's a rousing tale of the big lug in my short story collection, Twisted Tales from Tornado Alley. It features tugs to the heartstrings and limbs ripped from bodies. Bonus! Read it while camping.

The Problem with "They"

I'm going out on a limb here, but...I really don't understand the whole gender neutral and/or inclusive pronouns deal.

Okay, okay, before you start hurling your internet bricks of outrage, let me explain. Of course I empathize with peoples' otherness and respect their wishes to not be trapped within gender specific pronouns. (I can't say I actually legitimately "understand" it...I believe that's true for anyone who's never experienced a specific situation just as I can't "understand" what it's like to be a person of color. A thin person can't understand what it's like to be overweight and on and on.)

What I'm having difficulty getting past is the grammatical number disagreement in referring to one person using the plural "they" or "them." Put away those pitchforks of social media ire, people! It's just that as a writer, it hurts my ears to designate one person with a plural pronoun. (Except for maybe "Sybil," of course). 

There. I said it. (Ducks and covers...)

I brought this up to my wife, the English major.

She said, "Yeah, I was that way at first, too, but I got over it."

As will I. It'll take a little bit of practice for this old, stodgy fart to retrain my brain, but I vow that I will. The problem is my stodgy, old farty brain can't possibly keep up with the lightning quick and ever changing new developments in pronoun propriety.

Now, there are a slew of new pronouns to learn. There's zie, sie, ey, ve, zim, em, ver, zis, hirs, eirs, virs, Tad(?), and tons more! I'm not alone in being confused. My spell-checker is having a meltdown right now.

Again, I empathize with being made to feel otherness. More power to the social advocates for making changes and righting past wrongs. But there are so many new pronouns now, the thought of learning them all (and conjugating in Spanish!) strains my wee brain.

Man, for something called "gender fluid," I wished it flowed through my mind with more liquid clarity. Maybe using "they," as opposed to the numerous other new pronouns, won't be as hard as I originally thought.

Speaking of "otherness," there's an entire different other type of "people" living beneath the streets of Kansas City, ones you should pray you never meet. I'm talking about "The Underdwellers," my novella that many critics have called the scariest thing I've written. You can read it (along with a buncha other tales) in my collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley.

 

Kids Kill the Darndest People

Oh, those lil' cute murderous rapscallions!

Recently, my daughter told me a horrifying true tale from her childhood. When she was in grade school (a very nice Catholic school), the mean girls in her class didn't like the librarian. I dunno, maybe she'd shushed them one time too many or something equally as dire.

The librarian apparently had been very vocal about her own dislike for my daughter's class (except for my daughter, natch; librarian's pet, librarian's pet, librarian's pet!). Needless to say there was some bad library blood between the fourth grade girls and the librarian.

So, one day to get even, one of these little angels secretly poured bleach in the librarian's coffee cup. Yow! That'll kill ya! I mean, other than it being one of Trump's recommended beverages, it'll kill ya, and it still killed some Trump thumpers to boot.

But, hold on, the murderous hijinx didn't end there. After following the head evil lil' girl's lead, the other mean girls joined in on the wacky shenanigans, tee hee. Soon, they were all taking turns of covertly dropping tacks, paint, and all kinds of potentially murderous debris into the librarian's cup.

 Finally, one of the boys showed a shimmer of soul and pretended to "accidentally" knock the cup over, thus saving the librarian's life. And this poor kid ended up taking the bullet for the girl. (Hope she was worth it, guy.) The evil mastermind and her vile girl gang got off scot-free.

Sweet Mother of pearl! I hosted some of these lil' monsters at my daughter's slumber parties! I suppose I'm lucky they didn't set me on fire in my sleep. I mean, what would they've done to the janitor if he gave them the stink eye? Flay him to death?

Seriously, this is terrifying. What could a librarian possibly do to warrant her murder? 

We've all seen "The Bad Seed," right? This was the friggin' "bad garden."

Needless to say, I was horrified by this tale (and no, my daughter didn't know anything about it until after the fact), thus proving once and for all that girls are more evil than boys. Oh, sure, you'll get beat up by boy bullies, but you know, they get it out of their system and move onto the next big bullying thing. I took my fair share of lumps in my day, but I can honestly say that none of my bullies ever intended on murdering me.

So beware of adorably cute lil packages in pretty, pretty princess dresses. Evil lurks in pigtails.

While on the topic of evil children, my story "Halloweenie Roast" features several demonic kids on par with my daughter's heinous classmates. You can read it, along with other fine tales of horror and dark humor, in my collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley.

 

 

Torture by Kenny G

We've all been there. Stuck on the phone, on hold, and the unfortunate Kenny G comes wailing away at you with his God-awful, sickly sweet, dulcet saxophone tones.

Folks, it's worse than waterboarding and should be outlawed.

Torture is the only way to describe it. The powers that be have such disdain for us that they can't allow you to be patched through to a real person without first punishing you with agonizing minutes of Kenny G. They hate us that much. There can be no other explanation.

Pity my poor, suffering brother-in-law. Recently, his identity was stolen and used for unemployment benefits. As if this wasn't enough abuse, the onus was on him to attempt to break through the government robots on hold who soundly thrashed him with a half hour of Kenny G's "Songbird" on an endless loop.

On Facebook, my bro-in-law posted this and said, "I hate criminals." I replied, "the real crime is Kenny G."

I don't know whose idea it was to "entertain" people on hold with Kenny G. Someone, somewhere, must think that it's comforting music, meant to mollify the masses into compliant passivity until they finally break. In fact, it's no coincidence that Kenny G is the most popular on hold music across the world.

It's a conspiracy of far-right reaching proportions.

Look, I don't have a problem with Kenny G... Except for maybe his music sucks. It's like ear candy for grown-ups who have to be told that Kenny G is good. And the fact that a grown man is going around calling himself "Kenny G." First, Kenny is a child's name, Kenneth. Second, I highly doubt your last name is truly "G." And then there's Kenny's hair. Just looking at it makes me want to run for the scissors. Okay, and I hate having to be force-fed his ear pablum in so-called "relaxing" environs. I've been known to bolt from a store if Kenny G is wailing away from the speakers at ear-breaking decibels.

So, yeah. Maybe I do have a problem with Kenny G. I hate him.

Usually, when I'm on hold, it's either Kenny G or a close second worst, Christoper Cross' "Sailing." That's it, nothing else. And again it's no accident that these two are what pummels your ears, two of the worst and inexplicably popular entertainers from the last century. Government and big business want you to suffer, they want to torture you. To what nefarious ends, who knows. Big government moves in strange and mysterious ways.

Let's abolish Kenny G. As much as I despise the term "cancel culture," Kenny G truly deserves to be "cancelled" before he turns our minds into mush. Stop the insanity.

Now that I've gotten that insanity off my chest, I gotta plug my book, Peculiar County. It's my favorite outta 24 titles. Read it and see if you can understand why. Go on, I dare ya. Let me just put on a little Kenny G to play in the background while you go find it...