"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!

Taylor Swift: Psy-Op Agent for Socialism!

Bigger than Elvis! More powerful than Oprah! Charging dupes a single ticket price able to aid third-world countries! And with more masterful secret mind power than Donald Trump! Yes, it's Taylor Swift, psy-op agent of socialism! 

And she's got a license to trill!

It's come down to this. Thanks to those shrewd and integrity-filled investigative reporters at Fox news, newscaster Jesse Watters recently said, "Well, around four years ago, the pentagon psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset during a NATO meeting. What kind of asset? A psy-op for combatting online misinformation."

To which I have to say, "Duh, took you guys long enough to figure this one out!" Watters further went on to elaborate on agent Swift: "She's all right, but I mean, have you ever wondered why or how she blew up like this?" Thank you, Mr. Watters for uncovering the truth! For some time now (and I know I'm not alone in this), I've pondered how this gawky little farm-girl mouseketeer could seemingly transform overnight into the World's Biggest Entertainer. Now we know why. It's because her meteoric success is due to the manipulations of rich, male liberals with an evil agenda to see that Biden gets reelected. The way of our country! (God forbid we should actually credit a woman for her own success.)

Former FBI agent Stuart Kaplan chimed in: "It's possible Taylor Swift, quite frankly, isn't aware that she's being used in a covert manner to swing voters." So...even Ms. Swift's evil machinations aren't her fault. At least these guys are consistent, giving credit where credit is due. (Makes me kinda wonder why Mr. Kaplan is a "former" FBI agent.)

When asked about this new startling conspiracy, pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh said, "As for this conspiracy theory, we're going to shake it off." Presumably, she was referring in a cheeky manner to Ms. Swift's deadly lyrics, but the nonchalant manner in which Ms. Singh "shook it off" betrays a callous and evil liberal intent to subvert voters over to the left. 

Now I've known that Ms. Swift has been evil for some time. You can't escape her gawd-awful, ear-worm, bubblegum pop nonsense from the radio to elevators to grocery stores. And now that her evil, powerful, subliminal, and totally terrifying mind powers plot has been unveiled, I'm going to need to stuff cotton in my ears, so I don't suddenly find myself thinking unwanted thoughts that maybe abortion is okay or whatever.

My daughter thinks that the villainous Ms. Swift's insidious plots don't end there. She believes that the nefarious Buffalo Bills have hired Taylor Swift to infiltrate the Kansas City Chiefs via Travis Kelce to wreck his game. And it's worked. Since they started dating, look at Kelce's less than stellar performance.

Yes, the true threat to democracy isn't MAGA or Trump. It's Taylor Swift. Don't let the Swifties For Socialism get to YOU, too!

This has been a paid advertisement from the Beyonce For President campaign.

Speaking of total nonsense, check out my rollicking comic mystery series of Zach and Zora books, the only series around boasting a lead character even dumber than today's politicians. I fully endorse this message!

The Mathematical Division of Household Blame

My wife and I have different duties at home which are pretty evenly split. However, this isn't the case when it comes to blame. For you see, I generally get about 90% of the blame for when there are food mishaps.

Why, I remember it like it was yesterday... (Cue the fuzzy blurred out swirly image for a flashback.) Wait a minute...it was yesterday!

"Your Chinese food leaked juice all over the refrigerator," hollered my wife from the kitchen.

"But...it was for your benefit," I explained.

Silence. Crickets. Even more crickets.

Finally, "How in the hell was that for my benefit."

I finally got off the loveseat to go plead my case in the same room with her. "When you went to bed, you forgot to put your leftover Chinese food in the refrigerator. So I had to move mine to make way for yours. Apparently, when I moved mine (to make way for yours, I'd like to reiterate), it of necessity became canted, thus dribbling out the juice. For your benefit."

"Oh, no," she said, "you're not putting that on me!"

"But it was for your benefit," I said, standing my ground. "So you should be the one to clean it."

"That's ridiculous. Okay...what if I was making cookies for you and I had a terrible flour accident. Would you clean it up?"

"No," I said. 

"'No?' Why? It's the same thing!"

"Because you would eat the cookies, too. Your baking would benefit us both." I mean, this is clear, clean logic, right? Just follow the logic. Perfect sense.

Then she hit me with, "Okay, fine. What if I was making you coconut cookies and flour exploded everywhere?" Aha, I thought. Now she's using the same, strong logic right back at me, for she has an aversion toward coconut and won't touch it.

"That's different," I said. "Coconut cookies would be to my benefit, therefore rendering me the responsible party to clean up the flour explosion."

"Yeah, right. Like you'd clean it up."

I said, "I would! Go make coconut cookies and throw flour everywhere and watch me clean it!" Gotcha, I thought. I didn't think her hatred for coconut would even allow her to bake such cookies.

"Yeah, I'm not going to do that," she said.

Well, even though I laid out a flawless, logical defense in "Kitchen Court," I still lost the case and ended up cleaning the spilled Chinese sauce. (At least the sauce that I saw without moving items, which resulted in yet another Kitchen Court later.)

I went back to the love-seat, while she was still banging away in the kitchen. Soon enough, she's in the refrigerator and hollering about all the food that's gone to waste.

"Do you hear me?" she shouted. "You've got to quit letting food go to waste!"

"How is this my fault? You eat the food, too."

"Okay, I'd say it's about 85% your fault and 15% mine. We share the burden of responsibility."

"Wait a minute, hold on a second! That's not sharing. That's still blaming me for the majority! Where'd you come up with that over-inflated equation? Trump's accountants?"

I need a specialized slide rule or something to dole out arbitrary percentages of blame to my wife the next time we enter Kitchen Court. Best to be prepared.

Speaking of horror stories, you'll find a lot of 'em in my collection of creepy tales, Twisted Tales From Tornado Alley. Check it out!

"One horse SOAP and sleigh!"

Yep, you read that right. Throughout my childhood, I always thought one of the lyrics to "Jingle Bells" was "one horse soap and sleigh." I never questioned it, just went along my merry juvenile way singing my lil' foolish, gleeful, songbird head off like naïve kids who haven't yet been introduced to the Big Bad Real World do. My parents were no help, they didn't correct me, probably because they thought it was "cute" or something. (Kind of like how I would pronounce "S's" with a lisp which they found adorable, and thus encouraged it, while sending me right into an embarrassing remedial speech therapy class. Thanks, Mom and Dad!) Or maybe they thought those were the lyrics as well,

But I digress. As I grew older, I wondered what a one horse soap and sleigh was. At first, I thought maybe the soap on the sleigh's rails made it slicker in the snow. Then I thought not, for surely the snow would melt off the soap. Then I wondered if maybe EVERYBODY got the lyric wrong and it was supposed to be a "one horse souped up sleigh." Now that made sense. Yet it didn't. I knew the song was old, but it was probably even more ancient than beatnik slang like "souped up."

As the years fell away and my cynicism grew along with my height and awkwardness, I thought that maybe the songwriters were just as sadistic as fairy tale writers and they were hiding a morbid message: the horse would be slayed (most definitely not "sleighed") and turned into soap. Yikes.

Actually I forgot all about it until this Christmas. One groggy morning in bed, I asked my wife, "What does 'one horse soap and sleigh' mean?'"

She gave me her patented crazed look and said "What are you talking about?"

"Um, the song 'Jingle Bells.' There's a one horse soap and sleigh."

Her eyeroll was astronomical. "It's 'one horse open sleigh.'"

I said, "Ohhhhhhhhh," while pretending to have some semblance of dignity and intelligence left.

But my wife's no one to talk. If you were around in the 70's, undoubtedly you guys were throttled by that awful, maudlin Little River Band song, "Lonesome Loser." You know, the song where the groups singing is supposed to be celestial harmonies, but sounds more like a bag of cats thrown into a dog pound? Yeah, that one. For years, my wife thought the song was "Lonesome Lizard." Which makes absolutely no sense, especially for the poor lonesome reptile.

I think everybody has some song in their past where they got the lyrics wrong, A friend of mine who I lived with in college was one day singing along to the stereo. He was bebopping around the apartment, singing at the top of his lungs: "Mid-Summer's Dayyyyyy! Mid-Summer's DAYYYYYYYYYYY!"

I said, "Whoa! What the hell are you singing, Jerry?"

"'Mid-Summer's Day' by Men at Work. Duh."

Well. At least he got the band right. But the song was "It's a Mistake." How he got Mid-Summer's Day out of that is anyone's guess. Yet I made sure I laughed and laughed at him for too long a time.

But I think I'm just deflecting attention from my bonehead decades long Christmas song faux pas.

While on the topic of boneheads, it takes one to write one, I guess, and characters don't come any more boneheaded than one of the two leads in my Zach and Zora comical murder mystery series. You see, Zach is a male stripper (he prefers "male entertainment dancer") who constantly stumbles over dead bodies and is blamed for the murders by making really dumb life choices. It's up to his (usually pregnant and highly irritable) sleuth sister, Zora, to find the real killer and save her dumb brother's neck. Join the fun with the first book, Bad Day in a Banana Hammock!

The Tragedy of Humpty Dumpty

Since childhood, I've had a certain love/hate relationship with Humpty Dumpty, maybe even what you might call an affinity for the poor guy. Or at least an understanding of his tragic plight. For you see, Mr. Dumpty is kind of a sad creature, just a yolk shy of being pathetic. I mean, honestly...why in hell is a guy made out of a fragile egg sitting on a wall in the first place? Just plain stupid. But as one who identifies with Humpty's outsider status and applauds his do-it-his-way mentality, I can't help but overlook his idiotic life choices. (It's a pity that to this day, my childhood book of nursery rhymes scarred me for life; I still vividly remember Humpty's corpse laying broken on the ground with yolk and his life force oozing out of him. Hardly what I'd consider a happy childhood bedtime tale. What's wrong with these fairy tale writers?)

But it seems that my lifelong acquaintance with Mr. Dumpty still continues to this day. 

It all began with a crappy horror film from the 80's (as so many incidents in our house do). Now, my wife doesn't share my excitement for crummy genre films, but something about "Bloodsuckers From Outer Space" drew her in, the dumb comedy aspect of it, I'm sure. In the movie a character was wandering about a kitchen and we both noticed a particularly ugly cookie jar.

"That cookie jar," said my wife. "What...what it is?"

Squinting at the screen, I replied, "I'm pretty sure that's Humpty Dumpty. I think." I felt fairly confident in my answer, seeing as how I'm one of the world's foremost experts on Humpty Dumpty.

"Sure is creepy," she said.

"I know, right? But it's cool! I like it! Don't you like it?"

My wife waffled around a while, before finally committing. "Yeah, I guess."

So inspiration struck me, harder than Dumpty's smashing into the ground. With Christmas just weeks away, I thought it'd make a funny and surprising gift for my wife. Off to the intronets I trawled, finally hitting pay-dirt. Sure enough, Ebay sellers were putting up their "vintage Humpty Dumpty collectible cookie jars" for sale, albeit at exorbitant prices.

But I found one on Mercari, an Ebay knockoff, at a cheaper, more affordable price. 

Here's what arrived...

Crap. So off I went to Mercari to get a refund. (Hang on a minute...it's time for a rant.) Now...have you guys ever ordered from Mercari? Word of advice: DON'T. Their website is incredibly confusing (purposefully so, I think) to navigate and it's next to impossible to contact an actual customer service rep. I tried to go through their proper channels, but the site wouldn't let me. All requests for refunds are channeled through a robot. The robot told me "I'm sorry, you have no purchases with us." What??? Tell that to PayPal, you stoopid robot! So I tried to contact the seller (and I should've known something was up because he goes by the name "Charlie Brown"). The seller responded and said, "Just go through the process online." But I couldn't because they didn't think I made a purchase! So, I carefully pored over the website looking for an email address or phone number. Wait...there it is! "Contact us!" So I hit the shiny contact button annnnnnnnd...it took me back to the robot who insisted I didn't buy a broken Humpty Dumpty. With exactly zero phone numbers or email addresses on the website, I turned to Dr. Google. The good doctor Google turned up a phone number. I called it and after punching in my phone number and all sorts of other stuff, the robot returned with "I'm sorry. Customer service is not available in your area." Whaaaaaaaa?

So I went back to good ol' Charlie Brown and pleaded my case. Suddenly my messages to Charlie on Mercari were being deleted by the administration 'bots. By this time, I'm livid, working myself up into a lather. Finally, I found an email address online and sent them an angry message. Two days later, someone overseas writes back and tells me all the hoops I have to jump through by taking fifty pictures of packaging (which was nothing more than empty Amazon boxes) and sending them. And get this...they said in order to get a refund, I had to do it within twelve hours. So...I knocked out the photos and sent them immediately. Only to wait another two days for a reply. (They must really, REALLY be far overseas since there's always a 48 hour time lag). Anyway, after much more give and take and frustration, I finally--FINALLY--got a refund. (Rant over...now back to our regularly scheduled post...)

As I looked at the shattered pieces of Humpty and my shattered dream of giving it to my wife sank in, the irony of it all struck me: I'm going to do what all the king's men and all the king's horses couldn't do! I'd put Humpty Dumpty back together again! It'll be fun, I stupidly thought.

Now, this was my first time working with epoxy. Nobody told me of the intricate and tricky nature of it. I just thought simple, squeeze it out, stick the pieces together, boom! Instant Humpty Dumpty. But no. You had to work with it fast or the actual package and nozzle gets glued together, disabling any chance of ever getting any more of it out of the tube. I went through three tubes, singlehandedly keeping the epoxy manufacturers in business. And good luck getting it off your hands.

As I screamed and cursed and thought how stupid I was for thinking this would be "fun," Humpty caved in on me several times. I started over four times. That's perseverance! Let's see the lazy king's horses do that! (And for God's sake, why is the king letting his horses operate on an egg-man? I don't believe their hooves are known for their surgical dexterity.)

Finally, I finished. Or at least as good as it was gonna get. I had to finally give up on all of the small pieces on the back of his head as they just wouldn't take. But here's the finished result...

Sure, he kinda looks like a freakish Batman villain, or maybe one of the king's horses put him together, but I was happy that my "fun" Christmas project was at an end.

And that's about when I found out my wife thought it was super-creepy and scary and never wanted this particular Humpty in the first place. Merry Christmas!

Speaking of bad eggs, there's more than a few lurking about in my serial killer trilogy, Killers Incorporated. No, I'm not talking about the serial killers; they're the good guys! It's complicated. Find out how complicated right here!

Holiday Traditions: the Good, the Bad, and the Ridiculous

With the onslaught of the holidays (and yes, I do mean "onslaught"), I'm always prone to thinking of lost loved ones. And no one looms larger in my fond memories than my mother, the undisputed Queen of Christmas.

Every Christmas, it was always the same with her.

"Mom, what would you like for Christmas?" I'd ask every year, rendering me the poster boy for Einstein's definition of insanity.

"I don't want anything. Just for us to be one big happy family." This was her maddening stock answer, yet we continued to play the game yearly. It was maddening for several reasons: A) It didn't help anyone; and B) I'm not so sure we were ever "one big, happy family."

Don't get me wrong. There were good and happy times, but there was also a lot of discord over the years. And, no, I'm not blameless either (Hello, bad boy teenager years! Where've you been? Never mind.). Maybe when we were kids, I might've considered us a "big, happy family," but then again I remember being bullied and beaten by my older brother. I had big, happy bruises to show for it.

But I digress... I believe Mom looked forward to the holidays more than anyone in our family and she was a staunch believer in tradition. For crying out loud, she kept up the Santa Claus routine up until we were in college. Did we object? Not really. Why, I hear you asking? Probably because it made her happy.

She was such a traditionalist that one year when I suggested we have Christmas at my house because I didn't want her doing all the work, she looked at me like I'd just admitted to murdering Santa Claus.

Her jaw dropped. Her gaze stabbed me with visual icicles. "Why, Stuart...you KNOW I have Christmas every year. You KNOW that!"

Sacrilege! Never again did I dare to bring that up.

Another Christmas tradition was going to church on Christmas Eve. Oh, man, did I ever hate that, especially as a kid. It's miserable enough for children to suffer through a stuffy sermon while awaiting the Magical Day of Christmas to arrive, but the church my parents chose to torture us with was incredibly mind-numbingly, butt-deadeningly long and dull. At times, those services could last up to two hours . In fact, it wasn't just at Christmas, but every service I ever attended was excruciatingly unendurable. Pretty soon, the church expanded into several locations and the preacher couldn't keep up so he videotaped himself from another church.  

(Much to my nieces' amusement, I nicknamed it "Super Extended Video Church," and swore that the preacher was recording his message because he couldn't be bothered to get out of bed. While my nieces were amused, my mom wasn't so much.)

And then there were the family breakfasts where we traditionally ate at a hotel's buffet. This is where my mom would attack us, holding out her plate, asking everyone around the table in turn, "Would you like some of my food? How 'bout it? No? What about you? Take my bacon! TAKE IT!"

Now, I suppose it had something to do with my mom's midwestern upbringing, always displaying her Missouri graciousness and hosting even while dining out. But I really didn't get it. It's not like all the food we'd care to eat was less than six feet away in the buffet line. I suppose she wanted to save us that unnecessary six foot walk. Or something.

There were many, many more traditions that we adhered to, mostly of my mom's (and dad's) making. And we continued them up until my mom passed away, even though we'd outgrown a lot of them or even if some of them no longer made sense. Keeping the traditions alive made her happy, and seeing her happy put a kick into my step as well.

So, every Christmas, I do get nostalgic and think back on the nutty, crazy, goofy, silly, yet ultimately endearing traditions that we shared as a family. For at least one day out of the year, I suppose we were "one big, happy family," warts and all. Old traditions have somewhat fallen by the wayside as I suspect they do in every family, while new ones are forged and the circle continues. Mostly, though, I miss my parents. I tip my eggnog to them and now you guys have gone and got me all mushy. And I hate being mushy.

Happy holidays everyone and enjoy your traditions, new and old.

I See Dead People! Or Something...

Well, another day, another new physical ailment. The curse of growing old I suppose. My wife tends to see that glass as half-full. Not me, I'm a hole in the damn bucket that's not fixable kinda guy. I know that makes me unpleasant to be around (just ask my wife), but let's see how you react when everything in your body hurts.

But I digress...

You guys know what "floaters" are? No, I'm not talking about the dead stiffs TV cops pull out of the river and I'm definitely not referring to the after-effects of people who have too much fiber in their diet (if you know what I mean and maybe we better just stop talking about that right now).

No more digressions!

Back on point... The floaters I'm referring to are small specks or "clouds" that move across your line of sight. They become detached from your retina (or the vitreous connected to it) and there ain't no cure for it. Great! It's gonna kinda be hard to get used to this...

Why, I remember my first floater like it was yesterday... In fact, it was yesterday which is why I remember the specifics. Cue flashback music and swirly screen and...fade out...

It hit me suddenly. Stepping out of the shower, I turned my head toward the towel rack and suddenly a wisp of black smoke swam by me, then disappeared. I freaked out. Surely all the horror films and books that I'd consumed had come back to get me with a vengeance, for the Haunting of Stuart West had begun. I turned around, hoping for some rational explanation and the ghost zipped by me again. Standing in the bathroom, dripping wet and naked, I let loose an ear-piercing scream, much worse than when my wife spots an arachnid. Even my deaf dog came to see what was the matter.

Soon enough, all sorts of spirits and wisps were speeding by me, toying with me, always in the corner of my eye, but never staying long enough to solidify.

I did what any mature, responsible adult would do: I called my wife at work.

"Hi...um...I'm seeing dead people," I said.

Silence. Quiet. Dead quiet. Deader and quieter than the spirits haunting me from the periphery of my vision.

Finally, "What?"

I explained. And she explained to me what they were.

"Floaters? I thought that was what you might find in the toilet if you've had too much--"

"Don't be dumb," she said. Then she told me that there was nothing to be done about them. 

So I have to get used to them. I haven't yet. Once I've temporarily forgotten about them, a sudden turn of the head will bring them back to haunt me again. I'm trying to learn to embrace my constant new buddies, my ghostly apparitions piggy-backing onto my eyesight, but it's a chore. I'll never again take for granted those victims in horror films who are going through similar hauntings.

But I'd much rather have the kind of floaters you get when you've had too much fiber. At least they're not constantly with you.

Hoka-hoka-hey! While I'm battering you with juvenile humor (I'm six years old!), why not check out my incredibly juvenile Zach and Zora comic mystery series? The first book's title is Bad Day in a Banana Hammock and the humor just goes careening downhill after that. But don't take my word for it! Check 'em out yourself right about here!