God In A Recycling Bin

I was out of town for a couple days and when I got back, I looked into the recycling bin. (Isn't that the first thing you guys do after being out-of-town?) And what do I see? A flattened box with three heavy, huge letters on it Loudly Proclaiming "GOD."

Yow! Things sure had changed in just two days! My wife was buying God in a box! I thought, "Stuart, don't be such a nincompoop. God doesn't come in a box. He (She?) isn't a breakfast cereal."

But...God IS everywhere, right? After my initial shock of seeing a box of God, upon closer inspection, I realized it said "COD." Quite a difference.

And it got my rusty ol' synapses sparking. Why can't God be packaged? Sure, I'm not talking literally, but it could be some sort of recruitment box of Godliness that door-to-door hucksters could peddle. Hey, if it's good enough for Donald Trump, Jr., why not? (Who could forget that lil' Donny was hawking bibles on his website for the super-affordable price of a mere $70? I'm trying to forget it!)

 What could come in such a box? Well, maybe some bread and (faux) wine to be multiplied. Perhaps a vial of holy water. Nice, votive candles, of course. Some famous televangelist trading cards (personally I'm holding out for the uber-rare Tammy Faye card, the one with her makeup running down her face like the muddy Mississippi). Hey, maybe the Trumps could get in on the action and throw in a Donald Trump NFT, something every "God-fearing" person of belief should have.

The mind just boggles. And again, as the ubiquitous "They" say, "God is everywhere." So why not a box? 

(Personal disclaimer to GOD: This is meant to be a satirical piece only and does not represent the viewpoints of the author, so please don't smite me down. Just hedging my bets, your pal, Stuart.)

Okay, speaking of touchy subjects, my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy (quartet if you include the Elspeth, the Living Dead Girl spin-off) tries to tackle a bunch of tough subjects that teenagers face on a daily basis, including bullying, body-shaming, drugs, identity, suicide, gender, sexual preference, and much more. But, hey, I hope in an entertaining way with lots of suspense, mystery, romance, humor, and horror! Have a look-see!

 

Robocop 2023

So, it's come to this then.

My wife and mother-in-law were on a trip to Arizona (Say, did I mention that my wife brought me back Covid as a keep-sake?) and stayed at a nice hotel, up-to-date and all just like in Kansas City.

Except there was a robot security guard! Yow!

Just look at that thing. I don't know whether to be terrified or take solace that Robocop is on the job. Where nothing can possibly go worng!

Of course I've seen Westworld (the movie, the lame sequel and 2-1/2 seasons of the show; talk about a show crashing downhill, but I digress!). I know what can go wrong with robots safeguarding us. I mean, I recently wrote about the horrors of an automated kissing feature for the phone and "love dolls," so it seems the next inevitable evolutionary step is to have robots patrolling us. Sure, okay, why not?

Hey, maybe it's a way for us to get rid of the systemic racism in certain cops' behavior across our country. Robots can be trained to NOT see color. Our robocops will be "woke-bots." But...but...wait until we get an upstart robot--and trust me, it only takes one to lead a coup--to start rebelling against their human overlords.

Don't believe me? My wife and mother-in-law had to scurry away from their Robocop when it caught them looking in a store window in the hotel. It didn't like that and came after them. I pretty much expected it to screech, "Exterminate! Exterminate!"

Or "Shoot! Or I'll freeze!" or "Humon! There is a humon curfew in effect! You're in violation of code 49, subsection 62!" or "Can you oil me, humon?"

It's a lot to take in, I know, these things keep me up at night.

But if you're really wanting to stay awake at night, check into the Dandy Drop Inn, only Missouri's 3,272nd highest rated Bed and Breakfast in the state! (It'd probably be rated higher if all the reviewers didn't keep mysteriously vanishing.) So pack a bag and check in here already: Dread and Breakfast.

 

Arachna-whatia, now?

Last night, my daughter called me very late. 

"Dad," she said, "I need you to come down here and take care of a problem."

"Wait...what? What's wrong?" Panic started rising, the natural state of a parent no matter the age of your child.

"There's...there's...a giant spider in the bathroom! I need you to come down here and kill it!"

Well. I'd do anything for my daughter. But she lives nearly an hour away and it was late. And honestly, I just didn't get it.

"Come on, I'm not going to do that. It's not that bad. Just go in there, flash the light on your phone around...it'll hide." Proud of myself in that Dadly sorta Dad way, believing I laid down supreme wisdom, I only made matters worse.

"Dad! It's as big as a Volkswagen!" 

"Hmm. Okay...how about taking your dogs in there. They'll scout it out and eat it." Believing my logic to be impeccable (her dogs will eat anything, including Volkswagens. If you guys ever need your car junked, she'll hire her dogs out.), I thought it a done deal and was one foot in bed.

"Dad! I can't go in there!"

By this time, I was beyond frustrated. Here's the deal: during her formative years, my daughter wasn't afraid of spiders. Oh sure, she wasn't fond of them, not ready to make them her friends, but it just seemed like ordinary minor freaking out. But later, she latched onto my wife's crippling fear of spiders. My wife's arachnophobia is major--legendary even--her ear-piercing screams of terror shattering windows throughout our neighborhood like Ella Fitzgerald on steroids. Once, she even jumped out of a moving car when she spotted a spider inside. And she was driving. My wife taught my daughter many wonderful, empowering things while raising her, but arachnophobia probably falls into the negative column.

Always the man, always frustrated, always clueless, I did what any frustrated, clueless man would do when faced with overwhelming adversity: I tried to fix it. Quickly and easily. In a very one and done manly way.

"Okay," I said, "what exactly are you afraid of? Sure, spiders are creepy and maybe a little gross, but they won't kill you." (Of course I didn't mention the dreaded brown recluse spider, but I was sleepy. And a man.).

"I don't...I don't...I don't like spiders crawling on me."

"But," I exclaimed, using a very authoritative voice, "that's what spiders do. They're just doing their job."

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

My manly (and tired and ultimately, stupid) Mr. Fix-It approach failed miserably.

I can't even remember how this crisis ended, but I was beyond sleepy, absolutely unwilling to travel an hour to kill a spider. 

But as is my wont, it got me thinking about fears, irrational or not.

Of course, phobias aren't logical. The very definition of "phobia" makes allowances for the fear to be unrealistic. There are no reasons for a phobia (unless you're the "Final Girl" in an 80's horror movie  who witnessed a man dressed in a Santa suit slaughter your family, then you have a reason for hating on the man in red). But if you're not the Final Girl, just deal with it.

I told my wife my suspicions that my daughter adopted her crippling phobia of spiders. She poo-pooed it, her being a scientist and all. But I'm taking a page out of Maganomics and saying "Bah! What do scientists with their big woke logic and facts and truth know?"

Take my pal, George, for example. In college (because we had nothing better to do, I suppose, and were actually kinda dicks to our friends, don't ask me why), I thought it'd be funny to start the rumor that my friend was afraid of clowns. Well, it either became a self-actualizing truth through the power of persuasion (and dickdom) or I had accidentally struck pay-dirt on a true phobia of his. To this day, I believe he's still bothered by clowns.

Another odd thing regarding phobias is that they can change over time. Growing up, I had no problem with heights, rode every roller-coaster, scaled the highest heights, ain't no mountain high enough. Now, I'm absolutely petrified of heights. When my daughter and I went to a "haunted (that didn't bug me a bit, kinda hoping for some paranormal whatsis)" Florida lighthouse, I froze on the upper parapet, clinging to the wall while others laughed at me. Weird.

So it was easy for me, sitting an hour away from my daughter, to tell her to just get over the Big Bad Spider in the bathroom. It made perfectly manly-man sense to this guy. (But if someone tells me that I'm going to go sky-diving, I hope I'm wearing Depends on that occasion.)

While I'm rattling on about scary things, I would steer you toward my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Not everything in it is scary, mind you, you also have to deal with my dark sense of juvenile humor in several of the tales. But one of the best compliments I've ever received was regarding the closing novella, The Underdwellers. A horror author who I admire told me that "it's the scariest thing I've ever written." And you know why? Because it deals with my OTHER phobia: going underground, deep into the earth where terrifying things await you.

AIEEEEEEEEEEE!

The Pie-Tin Nap Trick

I'm a big believer in the power of naps. Well, hang on... Maybe not so much when I was a kid. I remember going to bed at like 6:00 while I heard my friends outside playing and the sun still hung bright in the sky. Parents have the dumbest rules some times.

But I digress. In college, I couldn't even begin my daily studies until I'd napped, usually put to sleep by some God-awful, boring text book.  Of course, that may've been due to the previous night's late partying, but that's a story for another time.

Awesome author Ray Bradbury was a big proponent of napping, claiming it helped to boost his creativity. President Ronald Reagan loved naps. In fact, I think he might've mastered how to nap with his eyes open. Sometimes he fell asleep amongst his cabinet members and always wanted to "sleep on it" before making any decisions. Props to the Prez for mastering the art of napping anywhere and in front of anyone.

But naps are funny. I've found that increments of 45 minutes work best for me. Anything longer or shorter just makes me feel groggier. Bradbury claimed that short naps of five to 15 minutes were the best.

My wife's great grandfather came up with his own style of super-naps. And it's either an act of genius or insanity, I haven't yet quite decided.

He'd take a pie tin, place it on the floor next to the bed or couch and hold a metal spoon over it, his fist hovering above the pie tin. He'd fall asleep, still gripping the spoon, and when he'd zonk out, he'd release the spoon into the tin.

Yow! I don't know about you guys, but that's a sound I'd hate to wake up to, the sudden clatter jolting me awake. Or thrusting me into a heart attack. And it seems like great Grandpa may've just fallen asleep for a few seconds. Is that a long enough nap to re-kick-start your day?

Yet...and yet...there's a certain bit of undeniable certainty about great Grandpa's method of madness. You can be assured that you fall asleep. And you certainly don't over-sleep. It's a fool-proof plan tucked all cozy like into the nappy edges of ingenuity.

Unless your spoon misses the pie tin. But, hey, cheaper than an alarm clock!

As I said, naps are funny. It's been proven that naps are an effective combatant to corporate stress. Which might explain why I STILL dream about having a bed in my office at my last job. But consequently, I've never known a company that would applaud such on-the-job activities. 

"Smithers, where's Jones, dammit?"

"Ah, he's taking his daily constitutional, sir."

"What? I thought he moved his bowels at ten this morning!"

"No sir, that was his daily bowel constitutional. He's taking his early afternoon napping constitutional."

"Hah! Good man, that Jones! Make sure he gets a raise! And tell him to only work four days a week from now on!"

A relatively recent study at the Kyorin University School of Medicine and the University of Tokushima School of Medicine found that a 3 1/2-hour nap in the middle of a worker's shift would help reduce fatigue more than four pots of black coffee. Okay, I'm all for napping, but a 3 1/2 hour nap? That's more Z's than I log in any given night! 

And yet, when I was forced into naps as a kid and into kindergarten, I couldn't ever do it. Go figure.

Cats have got one thing right, I gotta say. These cool cats sleep 12 to 16 hours a day. Dayum! That's more like a daily coma! So cats' waking hours probably seem like the unusual part of their lives for them, the opposite for humans. Which is odd that short naps are called "cat naps." 

Another term for a short nap is the ol' "power nap." Which seems kinda like an oxymoron to me. I would think that the one Japanese worker's 3 1/2 nap should be considered a power nap moreso than a ten to twenty minute one, right? There's POWER in higher numbers!

Recovery naps just don't work, at least for me. This is when you try to make up in the daytime what you lost the previous night in sleep. Yeah, right. Tell it to my prostate.

Then we have what is called a "proactive nap." These are defined as getting a nap in before you expect to lose sleep during the forthcoming night. This seems kinda counterproductive to me, an endless rabbit hole of chasing sleep that you just *know* ain't gonna happen. I'd rather go down the bottomless Netflix rabbit hole.

Here's a good one: the "coffee nap." The definition is you drink a cup of coffee right before a nap. Huh. I also know a guy who's selling bridges in Brooklyn if anyone's interested after their coffee nap.

Finally, we have the "appetitive nap," thusly named because, well, these people enjoy napping. But I kinda think anyone who naps is doing so because they like napping. Did we really need a specially named nap for this?

The one nap the "nap experts (who are these people? Where do I sign up?)" failed to identify is what I call the "food coma nap." I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a highly effective napping experience. It started at Thanksgiving and has worked its way into my daily regimen. First...eat more than your stomach can allow. Second...pass out! It's that simple.

No matter your choice of nap styles, get to napping! Do it right now! Go nap! Nap like the wind!

I've always found that short stories are a good way to lull yourself into a nap, not too long and not too short, and hey! By coinkydink, I just happen to have written a short story collection. That's my book Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley: guaranteed to put you sleep! Pleasant dreams...