Mom's In The Army Now...

Even as a kid, I was a tree-hugging pacifist. So when I first became aware of the draft, the possibility of my being torn from the safety of my parents' protection and thrust into battle terrified me.

So at the age of six or so, I cried, "Mommy...I don't wanna get drafted!"

My Mom hugged me and said, "Shh, shh, shh. Don't worry. If you get drafted, I'll go with you."

That worked--temporarily--to assuage my childhood fears.

But I started thinking of the larger ramifications...

"Oh great googly-moogly! My eyes have to be playing tricks on me! Either that or you knuckleheads have finally driven me around the bend! Private West! Is that your mother behind you?"

"Sir, yes, sir!"

"My stars and garters! Now I've seen everything! Both of you drop and give me 20!"

"Yes sir!"

Or maybe this scenario...

"Hey, West! Is your mommy gonna dig your foxholes for you?"

"You boys shut up before I come over there and scratch your eyes out!" (This was my mother's favorite terrifying threat whenever she thought her darling little boys were being mistreated.)

So I took my concerns back to my mom. "Mommy...you wouldn't really scratch the other soldiers' eyes out, would you?"

"It depends on how they treat you," she replied.

This scared me, but at the time bigger issues started to swim around in my boyish brain. "Why don't ladies get drafted?"

"Because we have babies."

"Oh." I pondered this. It made absolutely no sense and just seemed unfair overall. "Well...why don't men have babies?"

"Because they go to war," she replied without hesitation.

Which just confused me even further. Besides the very odd correlation of giving birth to war, I didn't understand the world at all. And it just got more confusing as I grew older.

Matters weren't helped when my parents rarely told me the truth about anything when I was a child. (Don't even get me going on the topic of sex.)

My takeaway from this nostalgic reexamination is this: If you get drafted, bring your mother. And always wear clean underwear because you never know when a tank might run over you.

Now that I'm being nostalgic and all about my parents, check out my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy. My protagonist's parents are based on my own (although--to my knowledge--my mom was never a witch). The fun starts here!

The Day the Earth Swallowed Me

Just another ordinary day. No, scratch that. Unlike our horrible Winter, it was an unnaturally beautiful February day. No snow, no ice, no winds, no tornados...just the temperature hanging out in the terrific upper '60's. And it felt great.

So Spring Fever beckoned me to sit out on the deck and watch my dogs do their business (an old guy hobby I've developed; you've gotta take your fun where you can find it.).

Now, our senior (mostly blind) dog was lagging behind as usual. So, I ventured out into the yard to gather him up and carry him inside.

With dog in arms, my arthritis dwindling due to the warm temperature, everything was going extremely well!

Naturally that's when Mother Nature decided to play a nasty trick on me. Halfway through the yard, the deck and back door into the house well within sight, BLAMMO!

The hell?...

I'm not sure what happened to our dog, but my entire right leg had fallen through the earth. Incredulous, stunned, I was stuck in the earth, my leg dangling below me into a hellish crater.

My first thought was This can't be happening. My second thought: My God, what kind of huge-ass creature burrowed this cave beneath six inches of top soil and is it going to eat my leg off? Finally, my most realistic thought occurred: I've stumbled into The Mole People's den!

Panicked, I began to yell and holler for my wife who was working upstairs. And it was the first time I ever cursed our house for having great sound insulation.

Stuck in the earth, no one to hear my cries for help before the Mole People devoured me, I weighed my options. My phone wasn't with me, so that was out of the question (never again will I belittle kids for having their phone glued to their hands). And as in the James Franco film where he cut off his arm to survive, that option seemed unlikely as I had no cutting utensil and my teeth couldn't reach my thigh.

If only one of our neighbors would look out the window, they would see me with the earth enveloping the entirety of my right leg and my left leg buckled beneath me in an agonizing contortionist's squat. No time for embarrassment!

The dogs were no help. The two younger ones just stood on the deck, wagging their tails while watching me squirm in pain. (I think they thought I was "taking care of my business.") Finally, the older, near-blind dog walked up toward me and I tried to shoo him away. If he fell into the hole, I wasn't sure we could fish him out as the cave felt like it went all the way to China (like in those informationally accurate cartoons I learned geography from).

I was on my own. With a great Herculean surge of energy, I unfolded my bent leg. Using my arms, I pushed through the surrounding mud (created by a foot of recently melted snow) until I got a good grip on the ground and pulled my leg out of the hole. It was still intact! Clearly, the Mole People were still slumbering.

But I couldn't get up. My arthritis was on fire, aggravated by my plummet into the earth, my knees, back and toes screaming for relief. Plus I had nothing to leverage my way up to standing.

Survival instinct kicked in. Using mostly my arms I pulled myself-- half-slithering, half-crawling--through wet grass, mud and dog poop. Lots and lots and LOTS of dog poop. Finally, I reached the deck where I was able to hoist myself up on my battered legs.

That was when my wife finally came to the rescue. She came into the kitchen and stopped at the open back door when she saw me.

Painted all the pretty (and smelly) earth-tones of mud and doggy-poo, I must've been quite the sight.

"Oh my..." she said, her eyes widening. "What happened?"

I explained. Carefully, she went out to the new hole in the yard, put her phone inside and took pictures. A vast cave just like I had thought, but that wasn't the weirdest part.

"Whoa," she exclaimed. "There's a concrete wall down there!"

I hobbled my way toward the excavation point, careful to stand as far back as I could. I couldn't see the wall, but her picture showed me the proof.

That's when my thoughts swam from woe-is-me tragedy to big-bucks-bonanza for us!

Obviously, we'd discovered Al Capone's TRUE vault, full of stacks and stacks of cash and Jimmy Hoffa's body! Eat it, Geraldo!

Then my wife sorta brought me back down to earth. "I don't know who to call in this situation."

"The press! Our financial guy! Everyone who's ever hacked us off, so we can rub our new riches in their--"

"I'll call our insurance agent," she said, ever the voice of reason.

The insurance agent told us to call the city. The city guy came out and said, "Not our problem. It's an old septic tank. Maybe an old cellar."

Boom. Fizzle, fizzle, fizzle... All of my dreams of fabulous monetary wealth went up as fast as my leg went down into the earth.

But...who do you call to restore the earth? I'm sorry, Mother Nature! Don't take it out on us! We recycle and do what we can to preserve our earth. Blame it on the Maga's! Make THEM fall through their yards! 

While I'm whining about lost opportunities, I may as well plug a book. Hey, it's Tex, the Witch Boy! My very first book and still one of my wife's favorites. It's got suspense, mystery, murder, witchcraft (natch), humor, pathos, romance, ghosts, supernatural shenanigans, a serial killer, and I do believe there's even a kitchen sink in there somewhere. But quit reading the hype, and go buy the dang thing already!

The Agony of Marching Band

I despised marching band. I know not many people share my sentiment on that and everyone I ever meet has nothing but good, jolly memories of their tenure in high school marching band.

Not me. It was hell on earth. (Then again, I hated all of high school, so what do I know?)

Even before my freshman year started, we had to get up early every morning and go to band practice. But it was all outside and more like football than anything music-related (I was actually in football in junior high for three days...but that's a story for another time.).

On the field, in the blistering heat of the last days of summer, we were forced to learn how to march (like good little soldiers), and suffered drill after drill until we got it right. Me? Apparently, I wasn't ever a good marcher, because the cruel dictator band teacher had all of these teacher's pet band seniors tap you on the shoulder when they thought you were good enough to go rest. Invariably, I was always the last one on the field, marching to my own beat while the "band bullies" laughed at my efforts. (Overweight and not very graceful at that point, I was an easy target).

Let's back up a second... I hear some of you saying "band bullies? There are no such thing! Everyone knows that the kids in band were all geeks!"

True enough. But even band geeks had their hierarchal system where they would try to demean and beat down those they found even lower than them in the high school picking order. And bullying always runs down hill. Bullies originate from being bullied themselves. And I was the band geek's target. Shows you how much I ranked in high school! The meaner ones called me names, openly humiliated me, threatened me with violence (there was a particularly evil, pimply-faced drummer), while most just chose to ignore me.

But that wasn't even the worst part of band. During junior high, I was a relatively decent alto saxophone player. And it was okay. I didn't have to march and there, everyone in band seemed on a pretty even keel. But once the hallowed hellish halls of high school tried to suck me into its vast black hole of despair, marching made me truly despise band.

When the weather turned cold, there we were out on the fields every morning at 6:00 am, tromping through rain, mud, and snow. By the time I got off the field and into my first class, I'd be either freezing from being rain-soaked or from sweat or both. Probably not a pretty sight nor smell.

And the dictator who taught the class absolutely hated me. Why? Because I wasn't the "golden boy" my older brother was who he had loved when he was a "marching band star." The teacher even resorted to insulting me and calling me names as well. (Okay, sure, I missed the bus ride the band took one weekend for an out-of-town game and that pissed him off, but I honestly had the departure time off by one hour. An honest mistake....or WAS it?)

The following Monday the teacher confronted me (in front of the entire class, natch). There he humiliated me and ordered me to write a fifty page paper on a classical composer. Being the apathetic student I was back then, I didn't comply and flunked the class.

My dad was appalled. Having played overseas in an army band (saxophonist extraordinaire, of course), he just couldn't understand how in the world I could flunk band.

Finally, he took pity on me and let me drop it (under the pretense that my other grades would improve. They didn't, not for another year when I learned I was about to flunk out if I didn't turn my act around).

So let this be a cautionary tale to you, boys and girls! Stay far, far, FAR away from marching band. Don't give in to the terrorism of the band geek toughs! If you're a geek (who will eventually rule the world, you just have to survive high school), then get into theatre. There, if you're a straight guy (so a friend told me), you won't have ANY competition for the theatre girls.

Speaking of high school hell, check out my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy. It's a supernatural, murder mystery, suspense, horror, comedy, romance, topical issues series that is often loosely autobiographical (excluding the serial killers and witchcraft elements, natch). You can find all the madness and fun here!

Medical Fun In My Swinging Sixties

Ah, yes, another week, another medical crisis. Folks, do whatever you can to avoid your sixties. Once I hit 60, it all started slaloming downhill like an out-of-control bus driven by a blind man on an ice-covered highway.

One day my wife says, "Hey, they're having heart scans for calcium build-up for a discount. I think it'd be a good idea if we did this."

I paused the TV and said, "Yeah, sure, sounds great," while having no idea what I was signing up for.

Okay, let's fast-forward to after the test (which was no big deal). Immediately, I get a call from a panicked nurse.

"Mr. West..." She sounded hesitant, a lowly assistant fated to deliver bad news.

"Yes?"

"Um, we got back the test results on your heart screening and...ah...your calcium levels are off the charts!"

Pause. Silence. Sooooo many crickets.

"Am I...am I...dying?"

"No. But you need to make some lifestyle changes."

"Wait...but...wait..."

"We'll send results in the mail."

I did indeed get results in the mail. Very non-specific results which said I was in the high calcium plaque level.

My wife dragged me to a cardiologist and he said, "Hmmmm. These results aren't very specific." 

"That's what I said, doc!" Defiantly, I stood my ground. "What can we do about this plaque in my arteries?"

"Well...get Roto-Rooter, maybe." Clearly tickled with himself, I let his joke falter beside my stone face. 

"Outside of that," he continued, "I'm going to order a stress test and echocardiogram." 

I groaned as he laid out the details of what this entailed.

Couple weeks later, I'm at the hospital awaiting alongside a buncha other old folks in walkers, wheelchairs, and lugging around oxygen tanks (straight from the casinos) to get into my three hour testing grounds. What life must feel like in an old folks home; the ghost of Christmas Future, ho, ho, ho.

The first nurse out of about a zillion, an amiably sleepy guy, comes to get me and explain the lay of the land.

"Now, I'm gonna stick this needle in your arm and then get an IV going."

Suddenly, I'm having PTSD flashbacks from sadistic Nurse Wretched from my days of being a lab rat in a skin study. "But...but, Josh," I whined, "my veins are really tough to find."

He says, "I'm an expert. It's boring to me, really."

Well, far be it from me to wake amiable Josh out of his going-through-the-motions sleepwalking on the job, so I let him do his job. True to his word, he hit it spot-on. Then he takes me back to the death waiting room. Where there's a horrendous drilling sound shaking the walls. Terrified, I look around at my "peers" to see if they're as fearful about the tortures awaiting them as I am, but mercifully for them, they don't have their hearing aids turned on.

Josh slides back in and gathers me up for my echocardiogram. "Meet Gunner, he's a really nice guy," he says and deposits me into the curiously monikered "Gunner's" hands.

"Get your shirt off and lay down facing me, arms up over your head, knees bent, butt back," he orders. The intern with him grimaces when I strip and attempt to do an awkward, backwards pirouette up onto the table, the least comfy contortionist position you could ever attempt. Sadists, the whole lot of them.

Gunner says, "Well, you don't really have to stick your butt out...I just think it's a fun lil' ice-breaker." Gunner and the intern giggle. I turn fifty shades of red.

Soon they're gelling up my chest and searching for my heart.

"Hmmmm..." says Gunner.

"'Hmmmm?' I repeat. "Is that a good 'hmmmm' or a bad 'hmmmm?"

"Well...according to the readings...you're already dead. But I'm sure the machine is just on the blink again." Gunner winks at the intern with a grin. "Pretty sure."

When I'm finally done with the comedy stylings of Gunner and his silent sidekick, Josh snags me again and takes me into another room. A nurse comes out and says, "Hi, I'm Natalie...and I'm here to stress you out."

I force a laugh while remembering a couple of past stress tests I've taken. Pure hell where they put you on a treadmill until you're ready to pass out and your heart explodes. Thankfully, with my arthritic knees, that's an impossibility for me now.

"I'm going to inject you with chemicals that will increase your heartrate. It might feel pretty weird for you," she says.

Wondering how "weird" things might get, I ask the burning question that's flaming through my brain. "Ahhh...has this ever given anyone a...you know, heart attack?"

"Well..." she drawls, digging deep into her nostalgia closet, "there was this one guy who apparently had a heart attack. But it turned out that he was high on cocaine and it simulated a heart attack. If it's any consolation, he loved it."

"Um...yeah, Natalie, that makes me feel soooooo much more comfortable."

After the injection, I'm awaiting for the spasms and seizures and freak-outs that are sure to accompany it, but not much happens. I get jittery (what else is new?), anxious (status quo, says my wife), and headachy, but no big freak-out.

They keep checking on me. "Doing okay?"

"Yeah...just a little anxious, but nothing new."

"Ummmm...your heart rate's off the charts, though."

"Is that...good or bad???"

"Normal," says Natalie.

A little dizzy, I sit up and wait it out while Josh comes back in to sleepily look me over and whisk me away to a tubular machine where he takes multiple pictures of my chest.

And finally, I'm released! Released into the wilds of wheelchairs, walkers, and oxygen tanks. Now...where's my cigarettes?

Speaking of making really stupid life choices, Tex McKenna, teenaged, angsty male witch, just can't help himself. I mean, why else try and find out the identity of the killer who's systematically taking out his high school's bullies (not that Tex will miss them all that much)? Soon enough, Tex and his small group of loyal allies are also in the killer's sites. Check out the mysterious, thrilling, funny, scary, suspenseful, romantic, paranormal adventures of Tex and company in my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy!

Pyro City, Pyro City, PYRO CITY!

You know, whenever we travel through Missouri, I'm always tickled by the gigantuous fireworks store just off the highway (conveniently located for yokels to drop in and pick 'em up 'splosives, perfect for the pyro on the go) called "Pyro City." If you've ever traveled along the highway around these parts, I'm certain you've seen it to. It's just a scooch down yonder from "Guns, Gas & Chicken" and just a holler away from "Porn Empornium."

But after I nearly burned down our house recently (twice!), I'm less hesitant to make a dumb joke about it, particularly while riding shotgun with my wife. To say she wasn't pleased is an understatement.

I blame it on the stoopid crab cakes (of course they're artificial crab cakes, I can't afford the real deal). When they go on sale at the grocery store, I snag about ten of them and freeze 'em. Ideal for microwaving, right?

WRONG!

Apparently, I had forgotten how long you microwave them from frozen. I wildly overestimated and tossed them in there for fourteen minutes. (I'd say I was having a "blonde day," but everyone knows that ain't right as I'm follicularly challenged).

I retired to the TV room awaiting the crispy, golden delicacy soon to be mine. After about seven minutes, it started smelling good. Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! Another five minutes go by and I'm thinking gosharoonie, I wonder if I should check them?

When I lean back to look into the kitchen, there's a huge cloud of smoke swirling in the air.

In a panic, I race to the kitchen, dogs coughing at my heel, and whip open the microwave door. Smoke billows out like an unfolding foam  mattress, clouding the kitchen to the point where I can't see in front of me. The smoke alarm goes off. Using an oven mitt, I take the offending crab cake out of the microwave and take it outside, where it continues to smolder.

Naturally, this all happened on a day when my wife was working upstairs. She left her online meeting to race downstairs and holler, "What happened?"

Well. Crab cakes happened. The work I had to do to try to air the house out was a gargantuan task. Candles were lit, windows were opened on a chilly day, and fans were set to spinning. Constantly, I microwaved vinegar in hopes for a "ta-dahhh" resolution to no avail. If you've ever burnt popcorn in the microwave, imagine that smell multiplied 300 times.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's been so long since I've microwaved crab cakes, I forgot how long to do it, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

But no manner of penance could change the horrific odor lingering in the house. For days, it reeked. My wife even threw in the towel and bought a new microwave, as I forlornly said goodbye to my old electrical appliance pal.

After about a week, the house was pretty much back to normal and all was forgiven. Or it would've been if I didn't do the exact same thing again. Hey! I cut the microwave time down to seven minutes! I was pretty sure that's how long I did them years ago!

For a while, my wife forbade me to use the microwave. Probably a good idea. Welcome to Pyro City!

Speaking of people making some incredibly bad life choices, meet Tex McKenna, teenage male witch. He makes quite a few dumb decisions, but hey! They're all in support of catching a high school serial killer, how dumb could they be? (In Tex's defense, he's excused because he's a teenager. Whereas, I'm still making poor microwaving choices.) Read about Tex's eerie, funny, socially topical escapades in the Tex, The Witch Boy trilogy available here!

How 'bout a nice hot cup of revenge?

"Revenge is a dish best served cold." So says the ubiquitous and mysterious "They." Lotsa tough guys (the kind who stitch their own wounds up) say it all the time in noirs and endless Liam Neeson revenge films (and truly, if your dad is Liam Neeson...emancipate yourself kids! Now!).

But what the hell does it mean? I've always pondered this strange saying. For one thing, I would think that revenge should be served up hot, because if you're seeking revenge, you're probably damn hot under the collar.

Second, why is it being served? Does Liam Neeson have a chef on call who follows him around on his daily doses of revenge-driven carnage? Does he wear the funny, poofy white chef's hat and tell the Neeson-mangled and beaten body laying in the street "you've been served, monsieur," with a crisp, put-upon French chuckle? Does he ask Neeson things like "Does monsieur prefer his revenge served cold or hot today?"

I tell ya, it makes no sense. It's enough to keep me up at night. And it does. So in the wee hours of the morning, I turned to my faithful research assistant, Ms. Google.

The quote is widely attributed to French author Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (why do the French have to have so many names?) in his 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. Or if you ask the geek contingent, they'll claim it's an ancient Klingon proverb. (I'd prefer to not ask them. Too often I hit my head in their mother's basements.)

Regardless, there's no clear answer as to what the saying means. One person suggests that seeking revenge is more satisfying if you put it off for a while (thus the "dish" growing cold). Another explanation is that if you seek to enact your revenge on someone who has wronged you, you won't be successful because the evil-doer is expecting retaliation. Thus, again, wait until the dish has cooled off than go in swinging. Or serving. Or eating. Or whatever.

These food metaphors really get my goat. Here's another one: "You can't have your cake and eat it too." Well...yes...yes you can! It's the whole point of ordering cake, for crying out loud.

I dunno. I think we need to ban food metaphors. It would make my universe much easier to understand.

And outside of Liam Neeson, do we "normals" really need to be worrying about serving up revenge, hot or cold?

Well, get ready, folks. Because if a certain "mandarin candidate" gets into the White House again, we can expect four years of ludicrous revenge, Neeson style. Only it won't be served cold. It'll likely be served IN ALL YELLY CAPS ON TRUTH SOCIAL!!!

Now that I'm done and kicked over my soap box, let's get to the hype portion of my post: check out my Tex, the Witch Boy series. It's got everything: humor, the supernatural, mystery, suspense, action, romance, and I'm pretty sure I included a kitchen sink in a couple of the books. Check out the series that nobody's talking about here!

Air-Conditioning the World

"We can't air condition the world," my dad would say. "Shut the door!"

Wow, my wee young brain thought, maybe air conditioning the world is a nice idea. I mean if people are starving in China (another shameful ploy my dad used to get me to eat lima beans), might not they also be hot in the summer if they can't afford air-conditioning?

So, for a while, young Stuart left the door open whenever he could get away with it, doing my part for humanity. (My liberal tendencies began from the crib onward).

Oh, sure, I felt guilty at times (particularly when my dad reached for his belt), because I knew that air conditioning the world might be a bit expensive. Yet, I thought a thousand dollars was about the biggest buncha money I'd ever heard of (next to a "Kazillion infinity"), and somehow I remember figuring that's what the bill for air conditioning the poor would ante up to, and I thought my parents could surely foot the bill. 

It was worth it.

I'd lay in bed at night thinking about how a cool wave emanated from our open door, circling the globe, and reaching the farthest countries of earth, delivering cool, sweet relief to those less fortunate and more sweaty than us. By golly, it's what Jesus would've done!

Then--after many, many punishments--I came up with a backup plan: if everyone who could afford air conditioning left their doors open, then the bill wouldn't be too bad at all.

Needless to say, my Quixotesque childhood quest to cool down mankind didn't get very far along after the first neighbor told me to get lost. (And I have absolutely no reason nor excuse for trying to leave the water faucets on and plugging the drains in the bathrooms when we'd leave for a family vacation other than I thought it'd be neat! Indoor pool! Gosh!)

But if everyone had opened their doors to cool off the world, we just might not have devastating climate change now. Hey, I never said I was a scientist.

While we're bandying about idiotic ideas, Tex McKenna--like all teenagers--is full of ideas that aren't very well thought out. His inner filter sometimes goes on the fritz when dealing with high school bullies. And his sudden newfound "witchdom" draws him straight into confrontation with a mysterious killer stalking the students at his school. But what's a teenage male witch to do? Find out the answers in my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy available here!

"But:" The Great Qualifier

"I'm not a Trump fan, but he was our greatest president ever."

Well. Huh. 

Lately, I'm hearing a lot of statements constructed in the same manner: The sentence begins with a bold declarative statement. Then the word "but" always follows (kinda like the butt of a joke). And finally, a complete whopper follow-up statement that completely negates everything that's come before it. Whenever you hear the "but" sentence, you can always count on the speaker swinging high and big for full impact. And it always--ALWAYS--renders the first "I'm not a..." part of the statement totally irrelevant.

I find that the "but" sentence generally can be broken down into three sub-categories: politics, racism, and conspiracy theories. (And what do these three categories have in common? We'll get to that!)

These days, it's common to hear people defend Trump (even though they pretend to start out not doing so). (Yeah, I don't get it either. I am but a mere reporter stating the facts.) But whenever someone starts out with a "I'm not a Trump fan, but..." sentence, you can bank on their turning around and kissing his orange heiny.

Here's another gem I've heard during the last horrible four years: "I'm not a MAGA follower, but the deep-state, evil Liberal satanists eat babies."

Fun in the 21st century.

I tend to glaze over and tune out whenever someone hits me with the "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but..." statement. You know it's going to be bad and there's no escape once they get on their conspiracy-painted soap-box. "I've got a TV dinner in the oven" won't work as an excuse to escape the conspiracy theorist once they have their hooks in you.

Here's a recent example:

"I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Covid's nothing but a hoax."

"Um...yeah...about my TV dinner..."

"It's true! Fox News says blah, blah, blah, yak, yak, yak...."

The true origins of Covid are also big in the "but" world. "I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but Fauci created Covid on purpose to infiltrate the deep-state into.....zzzzzzzzzz..."

Finally, this brings me to the third and final category of "but" statements, and probably the most heinous of all: racism.  Here are a few nuggets of wisdom especially curated and culled from various family members over the years:

"I'm not racist, but Mexicans are dirty."

"I'm not racist, but the colored need to stay with their own kind."

YOW! Sometimes I think I was switched at birth.

I started thinking about the true underlying meaning behind the "but" statement. Since they always begin somewhat preemptively apologetic, the speaker has to be aware of how possibly controversial--and perhaps, out and out wrong--what they're about to say is. So why bother following through? Remember the semi-golden rule: "If you have nothing nice to say, then don't say anything at all." However, the "but" statement is tricky. It's set up to allow the offending speaker an escape hatch if necessary.

Finally, what do the three sub-categories of "but" statements have in common? Simple: MAGA. Politics, racism, and conspiracy theories are the bedrock "values" of this horrible cult. Since the advent of MAGA, "but" statements have been overflowing like lava spewing from a poisonous volcano. And the brunt of the blame has to fall on Donny Trump's orange shoulders. Since his followers see that he says whatever the hell he wants to and damned with the consequences, they believe they should follow suit.

I don't hate Trump...but he truly, truly, truly, really, truly sucks. Gotcha!

Now that I've kicked over my own soap-box of righteousness, let's get back to the silly-ass world of escapism: check out my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy! Not only are they the first books I wrote, but they formed the bedrock of what was to follow in terms of characterization, humor, horror, suspense, and thematic substance. You're welcome!

Hazardous to pests and oafs

Sometimes I just can't help myself. Blessed (or cursed, more like) with an innate sense of curiosity, said curiosity has gotten me into a few messes during my lifetime. And yet, none quite as messy as a couple weeks ago.

I was upstairs in our office, fiddling around on my computer when I noticed a strange new item I hadn't seen before.

What's this strange, yet oddly compelling and weirdly attractive item I've never seen before, I pondered. Where did it come from? What is its purpose? I'm absolutely drawn to this mystery item with the attractive design wrapped around it, so much so that I MUST hold it.

So, curiosity drew me to it. Or I should say curiosity drew it to me. And you know what they say about that poor, damned cat, right?

I clutched the mystery obelisk around its middle and it clutched me right back. I gasped, a short intake of shock. 

What fresh hell is this? Why won't it let me go??? Am I in a Hellraiser movie???

I shook my hand, panicking, yet the stubborn object held on, much worse than my several Super Glue mishaps in the past. I jumped out of my chair, used my other hand to pull it away, yet that hand became equally ensnared around the insidious man-trap. Using my body, I pushed it up against the wall. Now my shirt was glued to the damned, damnable object from Hell.

Hopping around the room, waving my arm like a hillbilly who bit off more than he could chew (or vice versa) when he went noodling for the king of catfish, I flailed into plants and knocked over lamps.

"Help," I screamed. "Help! Help!" But it was to no avail. I was alone in the home. Unless you count my freaked out dogs who were just staring at me.

Finally, through the grace of God (and leverage, can't dismiss leverage), I managed to dislodge the hellish man-trap and flung it across the room.

My hands still sticky, I phoned my wife. Stat. "WHAT was that damned thing?"

After she was finished laughing at my trauma, she said, "A gnat trap. You're not supposed to pick it up. Duh. Now go wash your hands thoroughly."

Well. Did I feel stupid. But in my defense, there was no packaging. Packaging that might've said...oh, I dunno..."Warning! Harmful to pests, insects, and big, dumb, oafish men." Furthermore, why in the hell would the manufacturers make a pest trap so...so...damned attractive?

It's not like a pack of flies (are they "packs?") say to one another, "Hey, Charlie, check out that way-cool design on that decidedly retro-looking obelisk over yonder!"

"Wow," says Charlie, "I find myself strangely compelled to land on it to check it out further! But look out for the big, dumb oafish man sitting next to it."

Instead of a compelling design, I would rather have them imprint "WARNING! STICKY AS HELL!" all over it in big, bombastic, dreadfully dark letters. I doubt it would make much of a difference to gnats.

Speaking of guys who make some really dumb decisions, meet Tex McKenna, the protagonist of my Tex, the Witch Boy trilogy (well, quartet, kinda). But unlike me, Tex is a teenager, so making bad decisions is tantamount to growing up. (There's, um, no excuse for me, however.) Tex is also a witch and embroiled in a serial killer murder mystery at his high school. It's complicated. To find out how complicated, check the books out here!

Pesca-what-now?

My wife says to me, "What do you think about pescatarians?" 

I shrug and say, "Hmmm. Kinda indifferent, really. Aren't those the guys on 'Star Trek' with the ridged foreheads?"

She responds with an award-winning eyeroll.

Next I offer, "Wait... They're the scary cult of Joe Pesci fanatics, right?"

"Don't be dense, dear."

"Okay, okay. I know it's the fish-like people of Pescaria. But are they ruled by Aquaman or Submariner?"

Alright, the above is malarkey. I actually knew what a pescatarian was, but wasn't quite sure I was ready to take the full plunge. You see, my wife and I are constantly on the lookout for diets that work for us. For a long while, the low-carb deal worked wonders. But the older we get, the harder it is to take off those well-earned pounds.

So. Pescatarian it is! (For those few who don't know, pescatarians incorporate fish into an otherwise vegetarian diet. We're vegetarians who cheat.)

Of course there're pros and cons to this diet plan. On the con side, no more meat. Boooooooo! But to be honest, lately I'd been giving that some thought. Not too long ago, I remember gnawing at a chicken breast and began to think about the ramifications of this poor, brave chicken who valiantly gave its life so I could chow down on its meat. Except...it didn't really give its life. It had no say in the matter. It'd been raised in a pen only to be slaughtered and sold as food. Gross! And I don't see President Biden "pardoning" chickens every day. 

As an animal lover, the whole meat-eating thing's been kinda bugging me recently. (And, natch, as a meat lover of nearly sixty years, I was also torn, struggling to leave my slavering, carnivore instincts behind.) But I took the splash and dove in (hello, fishies!).

Now I hear some of you saying, "Stuart, don't feed us that liberal, granola b.s. about meat is murder. Get a grip, man! Go hug a tree, feel good about yourself, then follow that up with a slab of A-1 cow ribs!"

To that I say, "Leave me alone, dammit!" (I was always a great debater.)

Others may say, "Pffft. Animals are dumb. They're here to supply us food. Besides...everyone knows animals don't have souls."

And I would respond, "We don't know that. There's no possible way to scientifically discern that. For that matter, we don't even know if we have souls. A soul is not a scientific construct!"

Now before you bible-thumping, meat-eating guys come after me with a pitchfork, I'll grant you this little bit of hypocrisy: If based solely on moral reasoning, I think it's a bit insincere for pescatarians to eat fish and not meat. Science has proven that fish can feel pain. So there's that. Also, they have a central nervous system. (Now I'm thinking about all of those hooks into their mouths. Yikes.) 

Why are pescatarians allowed to eat fish and not meat? Beats me. Maybe it's because we try not to think of fish in the same way as we do, say, cows. I mean, fish don't walk, right? And let's face it...fish are kinda gross. Far from cute. At least the edible kind. 

Perhaps it's because fish aren't as visibly prevalent as chickens, hiding out in the ocean doing God knows what. You know...outta sight, outta mind, fair game to eat, let's dine! Bam!

But based upon an intensely in-depth scientific study I conducted (I made it up), the real reason pescatarians allow themselves to devour fish? So they can eat sushi. Everyone knows humankind can't exist without sushi.

(I kinda think the real reason, though, is that fish provides a great deal of nutrients and vitamins, and on a straight-up vegetarian diet, you could become anemic. But THAT'S hardly fun to yak about.)

So, how is the pescatarian diet going for me? Well, I've only been on it for a couple weeks, having it been kickstarted by a freak storm knocking out our electricity for days, thus forcing us to toss out all of our meat. A sign!

But the results so far have varied. When I'm eating a celery, peppers, and other junk wrap, I can't help but think about a juicy hamburger.

Speaking of which, my wife picked up some plant-based "burger" patties called "Beyond Meat." It's beyond meat alright...beyond and all the way into the trash can. When I cooked a couple in a skillet, I made the mistake of cooking them as long as meat. Needless to say, the rank odor of burnt plants still fills the house. (I bet Moses could relate, burning bush and all.) I also made the mistake of thinking it'd taste just like a meat burger. Instead, it sorta tasted like cardboard. Only worse.

I miss pizza. But, hey! I always forget I can have a 52 cheese pizza (hold the veggies, please, just this once) and pretend there's sausage on it. 

There are other cheats, too, lots of substitutes. And of course, all the gross fish I care to eat. It's a much better diet than straight-up vegetarianism. At least I get sushi!

While on the topic of what seemed like a good idea at the time, meet my protagonist "Tex" McKenna, regular guy who just wants to survive the travails of high school, such as bullying. Problem is he keeps making bad decisions, teenage style. Also, he's found out he's a witch. Compound that with the mysterious repeat killer who's targeted him and his few, but loyal friends. It's all in Tex, the Witch Boy, the first in a series of books.

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!

 

"I'll Scratch Their Eyes Out!"

During childhood, I remember my mom as being the kindest, sweetest, most loving mother in the world. I suppose most of us do (excluding some horror film serial killers or maybe Joan Crawford's daughter). But my mom had one simple tear in the fabric. When she turned "Dark Mom," it was terrifying!

No, I'm not talking about when she'd try and "spank" my brother and I. Actually, we hoped for that because she pulled her punches and cried more than our crocodile tears. (It was a much better fate than awaiting the flying, fiercely flailing hand {or belt} of my dad. I'm pretty sure Ward Cleaver took after the Beaver with the metal end of a belt, too, but that footage was cut from TV.)

There was one trigger--only one--that would morph my June Cleaveresque ray of sunshine mom into Dark Mom: when my mom "perceived" other adults--mostly teachers--as abusing her poor lil' innocent (*Cough!*) angel children. (And make no doubt about it, my brother and I genuinely deserved the teachers' wrath, at least 9 times out of 10, but that's hardly the point, right?). When Mom was triggered, brimstone lit up her eyes. Smoke roiled out of her nose. Her rosy complexion burned into a Devil's red. Hands gripped the steering wheel until knuckles turned bone white and I swear--no, I SWAN--claws began to grow from her fingernails.

But it was what she said that terrified me the most. "I'm gonna go scratch her eyes out!!!"

Yow!

First of all, the imagery, oh, the imagery. I vividly imagined Mom going up to my fourth grade teacher and stabbing her long nails into Miss Billyous's eyes, plunging them in again and again, while all sorts of viscera slung across the chalkboard and splattered my fellow students. She'd finish with two runny egg-like eyeballs impaled upon both index fingernails. All the time during this horrendous vision, she was hysterically tittering and laughing like the Wicked Witch of the West. Our namesake after all.

And poor Miss Billyou's crime against humanity? She dared to tell the class, "Well, by now, I'm sure all of you know that Santa Claus isn't real. It's your parents." (Side bar, your honor: To be honest, I was in the Santa doubting stage at that time, kinda wanting to hold onto the magic, the myth. But deep down, the logistics of it all didn't quite add up. I believe my fellow students had already bypassed that stage and nodded enthusiastically with Miss Billyous's whistle-blowing, to which I joined along, not to be labeled a pariah. Not like poor Roger Danton, who was audibly shocked and ridiculed because of it.)

So when my mom picked me up from school, I made the mistake of telling her about this. At the time, I believed I was being clever, trying to coerce a confession out of her, demanding an explanation why she'd lied to me all those years. After everything we'd been through together. So much for truth being the best policy and all that crap.

But something unexpected happened, she turned into Dark Mom. Immediately I knew I'd made a big mistake. 

"I'm going to go scratch her eyes out!" she shouted.

She zipped the car back into the parking lot, squealing the tires and making the scrambling kiddies squeal. In the backseat, I was hysterical. I didn't want Miss Billyous's eyes to get scratched out. I kinda liked Miss Billyous. Also, I didn't want my mom to be a prison lifer. Who'd make my sammitches? And I suppose part of me didn't want to have to deal with the humiliation of being the only student whose mother scratched the eyes out of their teacher.

"Please, Mom, don't do it! PLEEEEEESE! OH, NOOOOOOOO! She didn't mean it! I'll DO ANYTHING! PLEEEEEEEE..." I'm screaming and crying and I think I even threw my arms around my mom's neck to keep her from scratching out my teacher's eyes. My younger brother beside me had no idea what was going on, nor did he have a reason to join in the caterwauling, but he did, sensing trauma like a dog.

Thank God my mom finally relented. She huffed her way back to the mommy we knew and loved, almost shrinking with each loud exhalation huffed through her nose. "Fine," she finally said. "But she'd better not cross my path!"

So...if not a complete win, at least a stay of execution.

Now, I believe this trauma had been blown way out of proportion in my work-in-progress brain by a late night viewing my mom and I shared several weeks prior. It was something we enjoyed doing together on Saturday nights. She'd let me stay up with her for the 10:30 movie, we'd (she'd) cook popcorn and I can firmly nail this ritual down as the beginning of my love for movies.

Not that time, though. It was Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. The one where Suzanne Pleshette's eyes were pecked out by birds. EEEEEEEEEEEEEE! For years, I vividly remembered the quick shot, Suzanne's eyes all bloodied with gunk oozing out and splayed all across her teacher's blouse. (Of course, upon revisiting the film, my faulty childhood memory had the wrong character getting their eyes pecked out; I also remember thinking, "But...but...the movie didn't have an ending! What a rook!")

Anyway, I didn't want Miss Billyous ending up like a similar teacher with a similar fate, Suzanne Pleshette.

Well, that was the first Dark Mom transformation I recalled. There were many more after that. And each time, they became less and less traumatic. Near the end, I'd just roll my eyes and "whatever" her.

Now, the incident I just cited was a rarity. As I'd noted earlier, most times my brother and I came face to face with the misdirected wrath of Dark Mom, we usually deserved the teacher's punishment. We WERE brats. 

Case in point, my seventh grade art teacher banned me to sit in the hallway several days. My mom, upon hearing this, went Dark. She said, "I'll scratch her eyes out! She's just jealous of your art skills!" Well...no. Granted I was a good artist and granted, the teacher did dislike me. But she had good reason, too. I was the agent provocateur in that class and led about eight students into misbehaving along with me, their Don of Delinquency. When the teacher would go into the mysterious back supply closet, I had them all throwing yarn up and around the lights. It was a beautiful sight to behold. And Boom! I was sentenced to the hallway. Got an "F" for my troubles, too. Well deserved and bravo, old chap, an education utilized wisely!

So, I had to talk my mom out of scratching the teacher's eyes out. Not that I really thought she'd do it, mind you--not in the wise, experienced, mature mind of a seventh grader--but rather, I didn't want to go through the embarrassment of "Mommy yelling at teacher." I had street cred to maintain.

Wrapping this sermon up, I suppose if Mom morphed into Dark Mom, I, too, had a secret identity: Dark Pre-Teen.

Now that I've laid down just a taste of the kinda kid I was (just a taste, mind you), some of my *good* teenage years behavior can be found in my first book, Tex, The Witch Boy (republished recently by The Wild Rose Press). It's not all me, natch. I wasn't a witch, nor did I tackle murders, but a lot of the bullying and other incidents actually happened to me or a friend. (Ahem, artistic license is taken. I wasn't exactly a complete angel in high school, either. But those incidents are for another series...) That's Tex, the Witch Boy! Get it before all the copies magically go *POOF!*