The Night That the Lights Went Out in Kansas

Last week, tragedy struck. The electricity went out in my house for five days. Now, before you say, "Stuart, that hardly constitutes a tragedy," you'd best hear me out. Note that I didn't say five minutes, nor a piddly five hours. We're talking five DAYS. That's five days and four nights of sitting in the dark and sweating in the insufferable heat with absolutely NOTHING to do. That fully constitutes a tragedy in my book and I don't want to hear from any nay-sayers either!

It was a silent, but deadly storm (kinda like a fart) and it didn't last all that long, maybe 45 minutes tops. But the damage was incredible. And I slept through it all. I didn't mean to, mind you. But I was relaxed all the way back in my electric recliner with the dogs cowering on the floor below me and I nodded off. What awoke me was a series of transformers in the back yard cracking and popping like the Fourth of July.

And here's where the REAL tragedy hit. I was stuck in my recliner. All the way back, I couldn't scoot out to the footrest for fear that my weight might break it. Mercifully, my phone was next to me so I texted my wife with the tragic news. (Sidebar: While I was suffering the utmost in indignity and tragedy, my wife was gallivanting across the country with her mother, just having a merry ol' carefree time. The nerve!).

I wrote, "The power just went out and I'm stuck in our electric recliner with no way out!"

In return, I got no sympathy. Just much, much laughter and they shared my terrible predicament on our family group text thread. STILL no sympathy.

Finally, I put on my contortion pants and managed to roll sideways out of the recliner onto the other half of the love seat while my dogs watched this all in horrified bemusement, thinking "crazy-ass human."

Okay! Out of the loveseat! Now what? My phone was getting low on its battery, so I thought I'd call everybody I knew. But I couldn't get a clear message out and my texts weren't sending. However, I was able to get through to the electricity robot to report our outage, so that wasted a couple minutes. Finally, my neighbors got a text through to me and asked if I wanted to join them on a little neighborhood walk to survey the damage. I jumped at the chance, having not had human contact in over a week.

Except I couldn't get out of the house. A huge bunch of branches blocked my exit, barricading the stoop and stairs. With the help of my neighbor, we managed to move them and I tasted freedom! 

The damage was intense throughout the 'hood. Trees were downed everywhere. My deck furniture had all overturned, the table hurled out into the yard, the top having spun off like a Frisbee. There were more tree limbs covering yards than grass. Houses were damaged by fallen trees, windows had imploded (not sure how), and people were out in their yards taking in the catastrophe in stunned disbelief. It looked like a war-torn, devastated bomb-site.

Not really wanting to go sit by myself in the dark, I asked the neighbors to join me for a margarita on my deck. Hallelujah, they accepted.

You know, the first night was kinda fun in a strange way. There I was kicking it old school, like the pioneers of yesteryear, hanging out and reading by candlelight. Cool! I was somewhat giddy because I knew--absolutely KNEW--that the power would be restored sometime in the night and all would soon go back to being cool and comfy and kosher again.

So much for naïve optimism. After my neighbors left, I managed to bypass the electric company robot and got a person on the phone. She said, "Hmmm, let's see... Yes, there's been an outage reported in your area. Annnnnnddddd....okay, it looks like they had it set to be fixed by 5:30. Considering it's 9:00, that didn't happen. You're not alone, sir. There are 200,000 houses without electricity."

"200,000 houses! Um...then it's going to be a minute, isn't it?"

"Yes sir."

My heart sank along with any hopes of this being a temporary, minor electricity-free set-back. And with my phone dying, there was absolutely NOTHING to do. Potato chips were the only thing I could find in the dark to eat, not the most well-balanced meal in the world. And I know my wife has a battalion of flashlights strategically placed around the house for such an emergency, but I couldn't find a single one. Not in the dark, not with my phone on its last legs.

Remember what I said about being giddy, enjoying the ol' pioneer days as our ancestors had? By day two, I was kinda grumbly and mumbly, getting kinda pissy, sweating and bored and desperately needing some kind of human interaction and distraction.

By day three, I was like "SCREW Davey Crockett and those other pioneer guys! They never even knew the comforts--no...the NECESSITY--of air conditioning and electric lights so they were perfectly content to sit around campfires in their stupid coon-skin caps, doing absolutely NOTHING! DICKS! They probably didn't even READ!"

Thankfully, my daughter felt bad and came down the next day and took me to dinner before sending me back inside to the infernal house of doom and gloom, to sit in the dark and drink beer because there was nothing else to do.

Talk about tragic.

The next day, hey, whaddaya know? Another thunderstorm! Huzzah! Thus making it even too dark to read. In the meantime, I took to running my car in the driveway to charge up my phone. But after calling and/or texting everyone, I resorted to gaming. Which immediately sapped my battery again.

Our upstairs bedroom was absolutely sweltering, so I moved downstairs to the guest bedroom. But one of my dogs wouldn't come down, his whole existence being thrown into total disarray. So, in the dark, I stumbled up there, picked him up (his paws swimming at the air and fighting me) and carried him downstairs. Managed to do it without breaking a limb, too, a minor miracle.

And I was in for a horrible sweaty night. 

The kicker of it is while our entire block was out of electricity, all of the neighbors across the street never lost their power. Another of my fellow suffering neighbors said that after this was all over, we should have a party and not invite the people across the street. I agreed. We didn't want those stupid-head, electricity-enjoying jerks at our party, no way. Not after lording it over us lowly electricity-deficient people across the street. JERKS.

Meanwhile (when my phone had a full charge), I mercilessly stalked the power company's website map, taking note of when (if?) they'd ever assign a team to our problem. Sometimes we'd come close, with a team being assigned, only to have it go back to "waiting to be assigned." Over and over and over...

It turned out that there was a MAJOR problem with our block. Behind us and down about three houses, a colossal tree had toppled and completely broke off an electric pole. (A neighbor told me, 'Too bad the tree didn't fall the other way and take out the "Vets For Trump' sign.") So, the company took a look at that, shook their heads, and said, "Nope! We're not gonna waste four trucks and sixteen hours on a measly 60 houses being without power, when we can go for the larger outages in less time, and suck up all the heroic glory!" We had become marginalized because there weren't enough homes without power in our 'hood. We were near last in line.

The icing on the cake? The guy whose tree toppled the electric pole? He wasn't worried, because he had a ginormous, loud-ass generator! I felt like pounding on his door and yelling "let me in! I wanna stream some Netflix, dammit! Jerk-face! Hope you're enjoying your air conditioning!"

But hope springs eternal! My wife was finally--FINALLY--due back on the third day! HURRAH! Someone to share in my suffering and listen to my complaining and empathize with my endless pain!

The minute she stepped into the hot box, she said, "Uh-uh. Not doing it. Pack up! I found a dog-friendly hotel."

At long last (thanks to my friend, Yvonne, one of the last hold-outs on our street and my eyes on the ground), power was restored! HooRAH! And booooooooooo to the thousand dollars worth of food we had to toss out.

See what I mean by "tragedy?"

I swan (and you guys KNOW I hate "swanning") if any idiot climate change deniers starts spouting off their crap to me about how it's all bunk, I think a well-placed punch to their neck is a totally acceptable response. Then I'll lock them up in a hot box for four nights and five days.

Speaking of morons, they don't come any dumber than the protagonist of my comical murder mystery Zach and Zora series. You see, Zach (a male stripper, but call him a "male entertainment dancer"),  a dunderhead's dunderhead, just can't help but continue to find dead bodies of which he's usually implicated for the murder. Thankfully, his sharp (but much aggravated and usually pregnant) sister, Zora, is an accomplished sleuth who digs him out of more jams than a butter knife. Read the books that nobody's talking about and absolutely no one is clamoring for a fourth in the series (but it's coming one day, anyway), and start with the first, Bad Day in a Banana Hammock.

The King of Bathroom Reading

The reigning king of capitalism, Amazon, believes they have my number. They feel they know me very well. To my shock, horror and amusement, they sent me an email that read "Based on your recent viewing activity, we think you'd like the following books:

Learn a Lot While You Sit On the Pot and The Ultimate Toilet Activity Book and The Ultimate Bathroom Reader and, of course, everybody's favorite classic, Everybody Poops 410 Pounds a Year."

 

What's that now? WHAAAAAT? Where the hell did they get THIS???

To which I replied via email, 

 

"Dear Mr. or Mrs. Amazon, Unrelenting King and Queens of Commerce:

It was with great curiosity that I read your recent recommendations for my reading pleasure. But...you don't know me. You think you may know me, but you don't. Why in the world do you think I'm so anal (tee hee). It appears that you believe my reading interests consist only of books about poop and sitting on the toilet. As far as I know, I've never read--or even looked at--books about the fine and fun art of pottying. I believe pooping to be a natural act that one can't seek guidance for from a Dick and Jane instruction manual. Perhaps you'd better have a chat with your algorithm department and see if the monkeys have gone rogue again.

Furthermore, it's more than a little scary that your fine company (that is intent on taking over the world) is spying on me (yet getting it wrong, mind you.). I've a good mind to contact congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and report you. After all, she knows about the intrusive and spying nature of her television set so I'm pretty sure I can get her to float a bill against your spying habits.

Finally, is anyone exempt from your insidious spying practices? Do you send (ex) President Trump notifications about his bathroom reading, suggesting titles such as How To Commit Espionage in Ten Easy Steps or Potty Reader For the POTUS or Classified Documents For Toilet Perusing? 

I think not!

So, kindly refrain from spying on me in the future (especially if you continue to get it wrong)! I expect immediate satisfaction. In other words, lady and/or gentleman, crap or get off the pot.

Love,

Stuart West"

Overall, I think it was a pretty forceful missive which I fully expect will have the Evil Amazon Executives shaking in their designer boots and they'll have no recourse but to shower me with fabulous settlement money! (Except...I probably should've left off that last remark about "crap or get off the pot." Um...maybe their algorithm department isn't so off the mark, after all!)

While we're kicking around juvenile humor, why not check out Bad Day in a Banana Hammock and its sequels? Guaranteed the only comical mystery series EVER that features a dunder-headed male stripper and his (nearly always) pregnant and exasperated sleuthing sister. For fine bathroom reading, look no further than HERE!

Hey, kids! Have you tried delicious mealworms? YUM!

In keeping with my rather dangerous (and at times unsavory), impulsive habit of eating before thinking, I picked up a chow mein noodle off the kitchen counter, ready to pop it into my mouth for a quick and easy snack. For once, however, my inner censor didn't malfunction and imprinted doubt in my mind.

"Hold on a second there, buster," it said (strangely in a 40's Bowery Boys Bronx accent),  "remember the other day when you picked up a chocolate chip off the counter?"

"Oh, yeah," I said out loud, chow mein noodle held firmly between my thumb and forefinger, while the dogs looked on questioningly, particularly since they couldn't see who I was talking to. "It turned out it wasn't a chocolate chip at all!"

"And," my inner censor pestered, "what happened next, wise guy?"

"Um...I discovered too late it was a dog food kernel. Yuck!"

"Well, well...don't you think that means maybe you oughta reconsoider that noodle?"

I stared at the crisp noodle. Sooo enticing. Sooo begging for me to eat it. Then I said, "hey, why would my wife be using chow mein noodles in a recipe? We typically never eat fried foods."

So close, yet so far, I lowered the crisp, delicious nugget from my mouth. My gaze wandered the kitchen.  

Messy countertops? Check. Container of dozens of dog pills, treats, doo-dads, gizmos? Check. Cans that neither my wife or I wanted to run down to the basement yet? Check. Bag of mealworms? Che--

Mealworms?

Hold on a minute... Mealworms? What the hell are mealworms?

I picked up the bag and had a look. Turned it over and over. A new kinda healthy cereal? No, it didn't have that kinda Kapow packaging. A healthy taste treat? Maybe, but why put the word "worm" into the title unless...unless...

Unless...

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" 

Quickly--and quite dramatically--I hurled the offending mealworm toward the wall, hoping for a theatrical impact. Instead it just sort of fluttered to the floor, where to my horror, one of our dogs ate it.

When my wife got home, she had some 'splaining to do.

"What do you think they are?" she said. "Duh."

Well, that didn't really explain what they were, so I ventured online. (Now, some of you may be wondering why I didn't know what a "mealworm" was. It's quite simple: A} In my youth, I must've missed mealworm day at school; and B} I find worms to be of the most grotesque creatures on earth, hence why I don't go fishing and doubly-hence why I'm not all over the internet discovering the joys of wormdom. To quote my wife: "Duh.") But...being the intrepid reporter that I am--the things I do for you guys--I dug up what I could on "mealworms." (Yes, pun intended!)

Mealworms are the larval form of the yellow mealworm beatle, Tenebrio molitor, a species of darkling beetle. Which by no means makes them any less gross. Get this: the males emit a specific type of sexual pheromone. However, since there is so much inbreeding, the pheromone is diminished in the inbreeding hillbilly worms, and the females seek out the "outbred" ones. Good choice, ladies.

And hey! Mealworms are just adored by scientists and biologists because they're so honking big. Which in my book just makes them even squickier.

Here's where it gets really bad: people have been eating mealworms for centuries since they're purportedly high in protein. Some Asian countries sell them as street food. Why, you can even order up an insect burger with a high mealworm content! Yum. They can be processed into food products such as flour, which means that we've more than likely eaten mealworms in our lifetime. Finally, the European Union has approved them for human consumption. Thanks, guys!

"Wait," I said to my wife, "we're not gonna eat these, right? RIGHT?"

"Don't be stupid, dear," she said. "They're for the birds."

"Oooooooooooohhhhhhh," I replied. "But, then...why are they all over the kitchen?"

And from that point on, everywhere I looked, I found bags of mealworms. It rained mealworms. Like some sort of crazed Salvador Dali fever dream, I saw bags of mealworms on the kitchen counter, on top of the refrigerator, in the pantry. When I opened a cabinet, a bag fell down at my feet. Seeking solace in the garage, I found an industrial sized bag of mealworms. I had a nightmare where mealworms were re-hydrating and coming after me for revenge after I slurped down a massive bowl of them.

I think the European Union is trying to tell me something. Feeling kinda peckish now.

While I'm ranting about squirmy, gross creatures, you might find quite a few in my short story collection, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Why, off the top of my head, I can think of giant spiders, a couple of Bigfoot ("Bigfeet?" "Bigfoots?"), sentient yet malevolent plants from elsewhere, monstrous trick 'r treaters, underground mutated murderous monsters, and more creatures, ghosts, and spooks than you shake a jack-o-lantern at. Ask for it by name, read it at night, and check under the bed. That's Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley by Whammo!

Whaddaya talkin' about, Whatabouters?

Between what passes for politicians these days and the media, my vocabulary is expanding daily. Let's see...we've got stagflation (the cost of stag films these days), polycrisis and permacrisis (I believe the first deals with plastic and the second is the fall-out from a bad perm job), gender food gap (everyone knows men eat more than women), tarmac-to-arm (it's gotta mean keep your arms off the tarmac or face the consequences. I guess.), and distorted to suit both political parties' oh-so-needy needs. I particularly enjoy the "war on woke." Which is just nonsense in both the figurative and literal sense.

Now we have the "whatabouters." Yep, the ex orange-in-chief is at the center of this stupid new term. What are whatabouters? I'm glad you asked! Whatabouters are Trump's allies who defend his acts of stealing classified documents by deflecting from the true issues at heart. Their defense lies in "Whatabout Hillary and her emails?" or "Whatabout Biden and HIS stolen documents?"

Furthermore, the whatabouters scream and cry that our Department of Justice is hypocritical, a two-tiered base of justice. Well. If that's the case, the whatabouters are careening down that slippery highway of hypocrisy themselves. They refuse to acknowledge that tRump is actually guilty of taking classified documents, lying about having them, instructing his lackeys to hide them, and then is moronic enough to admit to having classified documents that he acknowledges he shouldn't have in the first place WHILE BEING RECORDED!

So...whatabout Hillary and her emails? She was dumb and technologically inept, I'll grant you that. But she was cleared of doing anything dubious. Whatabout Biden and his documents? Whoops. He didn't even remember having them (could be a little senility at play), but as soon as he found out about them, willingly turned them over. A far cry from stashing them in a luxury bathroom after being instructed to turn the classified documents over.

Which brings me to the most important point of this post: Have you guys SEEN Trump's bathroom? Gah! It's grotesque. I mean, not grotesque in my recurring nightmare of having to walk barefoot in one of the most disgusting bathrooms ever sense of grotesque. No, the design of Donny's bathroom is grotesque. Like the man himself, the bathroom's fugly, disturbing, gawdy, flamboyant, and uncomfortable. It looks like a toilet-filled shrine to the White House. Who was his interior decorator? Lindsey Graham??? I highly doubt I'd be at ease enough beneath a chandelier to conduct my daily constitutional. And just what does Donald do with those classified documents that are easily reachable within toilet distance? AIEEEEEEEEEE! MY EYES! Some things you just can't unsee.

Anyway... Royal bathrooms aside, I don't want to hear any more about these "whatabouters" until they acknowledge the truth. This is getting ridiculous. Having to deal with election and Covid deniers was bad enough. And how about our so-called "lawmakers" actually do something worthwhile with their time like passing merit-worthy laws instead of Marjorie Taylor Greene shouting that her TV is spying on her? The state of American politics these days is absurd.

But not as absurd as the adventures of Zach (a meat-headed "male entertainment dancer") and Zora (his exasperated, usually pregnant sleuth sister) as they skirt the screwier alleyways of murder, mystery, mayhem, and male strippers! Find out what's got (not) everybody talking about in the first book of the series, Bad Day in a Banana Hammock!