Where's Waldo...I mean Luch? Pick Luch out and win yourself an Atomic Blue Blog muffler and pantyhose set.

You can't put your arms around a memory

-lyrics by Johnny Thunders

It doesn't pay to try
All the smart boys know why
It doesn't mean I didn't try
I just never know why 

Feel so cold and all alone
Cause baby, you're not at home
And when I'm gone
Big deal, I'm still alone 

Feel so restless as I am
Beat my head against a pole
Try to knock some sense
Down in my bones

And even though I don't show
The scars are so old 

You can't put your arms around a memory
You can't put your arms around a memory
You can't put your arms around a memory

Don't try, don't try 

You're just a bastard kid
And you got no name
Could you live with me
We're one and the same
And even though I don't show
The scars are so old

You can't put your arms around a memory
You can't put your arms around a memory
You can't put your arms around a memory

Don't try, don't try 

Yeah your memory
I wanna put my arms around your memory
I can try, I can try
Don't try
Come on...

------------------------------------
You may not be able to put your arms 
around a memory but you can put your
fist through a wall.  Yeah, it hurts.
I want to thank Mr. Bluesmith
for giving me props on his blog once
again.  Of course everyone reads his
blog so there's no need to really do
this except to say thanks... 

Happy 1st Birthday Sensi...

Aphros or Beer Head

In the clogged heart that is our nation’s capital, where the cannibalistic congressmen and women suck the marrow from the bones of hope, where George Washington’s wooden teeth lie cemented under the helicopter pad in the White House rose garden, I found myself and it was a self embalmed with several brands of high end beer. We sat stapled to the stuffed bar stools in Bangkok Joe’s as the bartender, a slight Vietnamese woman with NBA like dexterity, tossed beakers and bottles back in forth mixing strange alcoholic potions and topping them off with flowers, wedges of fruit, and pink umbrellas.

“I’d like an umbrella,” I said, holding my beer glass out over the bar.

The bartender covered her mouth but I could see the corners of her smile, like butterfly wings, sticking out on either side of her delicate hand. She daintily plucked an umbrella from a box, as if picking the funny bone from a game of Operation and placed it in my frothing beer.

“Gracias, buttercup,” I said.

My brother Sergeant sighed. He had seen my tactics before and I must say he seemed slightly less than impressed.

“What?” I asked.

Sergeant shook his head and went back to his beer, which looked way too low to me but then that’s the way all beers appeared to my alcohol soaked eyes. You see we’d been working all day hauling drywall and 2x4’s to his basement and assembling them in what was to be a basement bedroom in his newly purchased home in Georgetown. I was cheap labor, beer and cigars and burritos placing my going rate at one tenth of most union laborers. So, to sate the great beast that were my many vices he took me out at night and stuffed me full of all that I needed. The only vice he couldn’t take care of was my great lusting for women of all shapes and sizes. The burden of this vice was too great for even a man of many resources that my brother is, for I have the incredible knack for making a bad first impression and thus have ruined many possible encounters because of my overzealousness. Yes, when the subject matter of women arises I find myself salivating profusely not unlike one of Pavlov’s own.

“So are you from around here?” I asked the bartender.

“Not originally,” she said in a thick accent that made her tongue sound as if it were swimming through a river of pudding.

“Good because if you were I’d worry that the corruptness of this place might have penetrated your beauty and rotted your wholesome core.”

“You’re funny,” she said, pulling at her white collar.

“He’s not funny. He only thinks he is,” Sergeant said and grinned.

“What time do you get off?” I asked.

“Why don’t you just ask her to sleep with you,” Sergeant said.

“I was getting to that,” I said, standing, “now if you’ll excuse me I need to use the restroom.” Leaving on a slightly up beat was the best thing I could do before I really fucked everything up.

The bartender giggled, her dark eyes connecting with mine and locking in some wonderfully strange moment that I probably can’t adequately describe in words but will humbly try to do so, though this may be an insult to the gods who pieced her together, fiber by beautiful fiber. She was like a fine piece of sculpture honed to dimensions, the blue prints of which were most definitely stolen from Aphrodite. It is said that Aphrodite’s father Uranus had his unit cut off by his son Cronus and his package tossed into the ocean like a discarded fish head. Evidently there was great deal of frothing and churning and low and behold Aphrodite rose from this aphros (sea foam). I was quite sure only some divine event like this could have created such an exquisite beauty as the bartender in front of me. She smiled and my leg twitched like that of an excited dog.

Yes, I believed I was in, or at least I let myself believe I was in because I was inebriated and I need to believe it. Yes, I’ve been wrong before as previously stated but I had nothing to lose, well except for my beer, cigar and burrito privileges which Sergeant would surely yank if I made an ass out of myself in his favorite haunt. I hurried back to the restrooms.

Once I found the men’s toilet I locked myself inside and unloaded the six or seven beers I’d drunk in the last hour. After washing up I made to leave but to my horror the lock on the bathroom door seemed to be jammed.

“Mother fucker,” I said. “This isn’t good.”

I wrenched the doorknob left and then right. Nothing. The bastard wouldn’t budge. I hrust my shoulder into the door to see if I could dislodged it but to my chagrin it stayed firmly in place. It occurred to me that I might use my cell phone and get Sergeant to have management release me from my toilet tomb. I punched in Sergeant’s number.

“Sergeant, it’s your brother. I’m trapped in the shitter. Send in the troops.”

“Quit fucking around,” Sergeant said and hung up.

I tried to call him back but he’d turned off his phone. This wasn’t good. The booze was impairing my judgment. I panicked. Like an enraged bull I shuffled backwards scuffing the soles of my sneakers madly on the tiled floor and then with all the power that my legs possessed I shot forward. Evidently the force I exerted was beyond anything a reasonable person would have tried to use to open a door but remember we’re talking about me, an individual that takes on life at twice the velocity recommended by most physicians. There was also the matter of an elderly gentleman opening the door just as I shot forward. Well, when I didn’t hit the door I opened my eyes just before I smashed into a chef in the kitchen. He’d been holding a rather tantalizing looking entrée made with a white sauce and shrimp, which I was now wearing.

“What are you doing,” the chef said, picking himself up off the floor.

He had a little Charlie Chaplin mustache and strangely his shoes were very large and turned out to the sides just like the silent film star’s. A Vietnamese Charlie Chaplin?

“Someone locked me in the bathroom. I had to try to break the door down,” I said, jumping to my feet.

“You mad man. You going to jail. I call police,” the chef cried.

“Easy there my friend,” I said brushing a shrimp off his lapel.

“What are you doing?” Sergeant cried.

He was standing in the doorway with the bartender.

“The door, it was stuck. Then I ran and it wasn’t stuck. I flew into the kitchen.”

“I can’t leave you alone for a minute. Come on let’s get out of here.”

“I really am sorry about the entrée,” I said.

“Get out of my kitchen,” the chef cried, waving a whisk at me.

Out at the bar Sergeant settled our tab. I tried to make eye contact with the bartender again but she kept looking away.

“So what are you doing after work?” I finally asked.

I brushed at the sauce on my shirt and seeing a shrimp there popped it in my mouth.

“Hmm, not bad,” I said.

“I have to get up and get on an airplane in the morning,” she said.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to Vietnam.”

“Right,” I said.

There’s something strange going down

As the morning traffic stewed in a cess pot of heavily gurgling muffler excretion I leaned back and patted the dog carrier in the back seat of my Cherokee. My two loyal Chihuahuas were caged there so that they wouldn’t break free during a break at a stop light. It only served to reason that I’d be cautious of such a possibility because despite their diminutive statures they were specially trained at arterial combat, which is the art of latching on to various areas of the body where the arteries are housed and tugging until blood shoots forth like the sparks from some dastardly Chinese firework. Yes, these dogs are nothing to toy with just ask that serial rapist who came to my front door disguised as a mailman. I consider the resulting law suit par for the course and gladly shelled out the money I’d inherited from a rich radiation baron uncle. He made a mint sterilizing vegetables and medical equipment with the stuff. I thank the tiny gods that live in the crawl space below my attic that I received the inheritance while he was still alive and before the feds found he’d been disposing of the radiation in the old swimming pool behind his house. Thanks uncle Jimmy.

At any rate, I was off that morning with the pack in the back seat because I was headed to the veterinarian’s office. During a semi-brutal fight between my female Uma and her male counterpart Flea--known in some circles as the John Holmes of Chihuahua’s—(yes, when he’s aroused it looks like he’s harboring a carrot between his legs) there had been a terrible eye injury. Flea’s eye had been peeled back like the skin of a cooked onion and only by the grace of his rabbit like agility and superior healing abilities, facilitated by herbal infusions and generous applications of heavy antibiotic cream had he escaped loss of the bulbous eye.

“We’re here,” I cried as swung the wheel of the Cherokee sharply left and slid--the tires screeching like fruit bats on mescaline-- into the parking lot of the vet’s office.

The dogs went mad, as if possessed by the souls of demented rats, for they despised even the site of the vet’s building. They knew that within those walls lay the sharp probing utensils that veterinarians thrust about with reckless abandon, aiming for any orifice that might be closest and then digging as if gold encrusted the underbellies of their hides. Or at least this is what my Chihuahuas told me with their weeping eyes as I carried them through the front door. Whether or not this can be believed should be left up to your discretion.

“Hi there,” I said, as I passed in front of the window at the receptionists’ area.

There were three women on duty. Each of them youthful and nubile, untouched by the withering hands of time, possibly plucked from some Bacchus themed painting with the little horn dog sitting in the center of nudes lying listlessly about slurping wine from goat’s horns and dipping their toes in crystal clear blue waters of some ancient hot tub like pool. Yes, they were gorgeous and if it weren’t for the dogs in each of my fists I might have been sporting wood right there in the middle of the waiting room.

“Is that Flea?” a red hair receptionist asked.

It took me a moment to regain my composure as I stared into her mesmerizing green eyes which glinted like the bottoms of polished Coke bottles.

“Yes, I’m Flea,” I said.

“You’re Flea? I thought…never mind. Uh, okay,” she said, “why don’t we go to the examination room.”

“Yes, we should,” I said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“A drink?” she asked, her eyebrows rising up in terror.

“Uh, yeah, a good glass of water filters out the dander these cats and dogs throw off. I always carry a 2 liter bottle of the stuff. Unless of course my hands are full,” I said, thrusting my dogs at her.

Flea hissed and snapped, his brown teeth jutting out like the barbs of a rusted fence wire.

She smiled and I knew that I was in. In where I wasn’t quite sure but a smile is never a bad thing I reasoned.

I sat on the stainless steel bench beside the examination table and watched as the redhead exited the room. She turned quickly surprising me and caught me gendering at her exquisitely shaped ass. She smiled again. Something moved in my pants.

“The doctor will be with you in a minute,” she said and was gone.

The dogs howled and I pulled live treats from my pocket and in that way sated the ferocious duo. As the dogs devoured their snack the strangest thing went down. Beautiful woman after beautiful woman passed in front of the open door.

“What the Hell?” I said under my breath.

Each woman that passed seemed to be more lovely than the last and I had the feeling for a moment that while taking my morning vitamins I’d accidentally dipped into one of the strong medications I keep in my cabinets that I keep for the occasional escape from the bitterness of disappointment that the fucker reality always casts my way. There was however no fuzziness and my mind seemed as sharp as ever in fact these women seemed not only clear but perfectly so.

I heard giggling and laughing and the splashing of water and the Bacchus painting came rushing back to me like a pack of mule deer to a giant salt lick. It seemed that the old veterinarian had some sort of dog hospital orgy going down in his quarters. My innate curiosity would not let me be still. I had to get the bottom of the feminine glee consuming this place. If there were shenanigans going on I wanted to take part or at the very least watch and perhaps video tape. If they refused me I threaten to report them to American Kennel Club or the SPCA or some such organization. These bleeding animal heart types were suckers for the bylaws of such authority or so I hoped.

I tethered my Chihuahuas to the examination table and emptied the pockets of my camouflage shorts of all the liver treats. I would get to the bottom of this and perhaps get laid in the process. Yes, yes I understand that it was perhaps a long shot but in my world the only shots I have are generally long, the odds slim and the drinks a plenty. This combination is often a recipe for the loneliness and desperation that drives me to do the things most people would consider too bizarre.

I peaked my head out of the door and the sound of giggling and laughter continued down the hall behind a closed door. I pressed my back pressed against the wall and slowly eased my way down the long hallway, sweat pouring out from under the brim of my Titleist golf hat.

Thankfully I had my Binaca Breath Spray with me and shot several mists into my open mouth as I maneuvered stealthily forward. There was no way I was going to bust in on an orgy without minty breath. Alas, this powerful breath elixir not only covered any possible trace of halitosis but as I inhaled caused all the stale breath that had been saved up in the corners of my lungs to burst out through my nostrils and the resulting noise sounded not unlike the lusty exhalation of fornicating hippos. Yes, precisely just like the one’s I’d experienced while in Senegal, Africa some years prior whilst taking an early morning jaunt along the banks of the Gambia and smoking some of the local vegetation. I was sure that this ruckus would expose my whereabouts, that my plan to crash this possible orgy would be exposed and I would cast out with those that couldn’t pay their vet bills.

I waited in silence, waiting for one of the gorgeous lovelies to bust out from the door with a tranquilizer gun, shoot me in the ass, render me helpless, hogtie me and pull me around the building on a dog leash. Or perhaps that was just a fantasy I harbored and was letting my imagination get the best of me. At any rate I waited and no one came but the giggling and splashing started up again and intensified, as did the tension in my loins to the point of nearly causing me to faint. There was but one thing to do. I had to go in. I had to see with my own eyes the sexual escapades that I knew were taking place several feet away behind the examination room door.

My hand shaking, I took hold of the doorknob.

“Easy, old boy,” I said, fearing I would lose my nerve. “It’s now or never.”

Every muscle in my body rock hard with tension--yes, every muscle--I thrust the door open and jumped inside.

“Aha,” I cried.

There were screams and hands reaching for towels. I stood there slack jawed.

“What are you doing in here?” the veterinarian demanded.

I surveyed the scene; puppies, a wash basin, soapy water, towels. By God, they were washing puppies.

“I uh, was looking for the bathroom,” I stammered.

“Is that how you enter a bathroom? the veterinarian said.

“Yes, yes it is. I like to make sure everyone knows I’m coming.”

The female assistants took a step back, yes every gorgeous one of them. It seemed they thought me crazy or at the very least demented on some sort of hardcore drug. The veterinarian ran his hand through his salt and pepper pompadour. I saw him eyeing the telephone on the wall. He was readying to call the authorities.

“Okay, I’m going to have to be honest with you. My dog was looking ill and I was worried that no one had come to check on him. I love my Chihuahuas like children.”

“That’s so sweet,” a brunette with huge cans said.

“Please, can we hurry. The little guy looks really really bad,” I said, and tried to force out a few tears thinking of money I’d lost in that lawsuit.

There was a collective sigh from all the beautiful lasses present.

“All right come on,” the veterinarian said.

We all rushed back to the examination room where my dogs were. Evidently they’d housed all the liver treats, Flea having consumed the better part of them. He looked bloated and if my eyes weren’t deceiving me as green as a somewhat sick.

“Come here boy,” I cried.

Flea started towards me and then suddenly stopped. He opened his mouth, burped and then barfed up all the liver treats on the veterinarian’s shoes.

“He is really sick,” a voluptuous blond said.

“I told you,” I said.

The veterinarian grabbed Flea and laid him on the examination table.

“Quick get me my stethoscope stat,” he cried.

There was a flurry of gorgeous women and I sank back on the stainless steel bench with Uma in my arms.

I didn’t go to jail that day and I didn’t get to partake in an orgy with the beautiful veterinarian’s assistants but I did get the blonde’s phone number and God willing I will get a little bit more this Friday night. If there is a moral to this story it is that beautiful women should be doggedly pursued and making an ass out yourself often opens doors, and the hearts of those that are gullible enough to believe your crazy stories. So attack life with gusto, yes there will be times the authorities are called and restraining orders may be issued but there are also times when you’ll end up suckling the earlobe of a gorgeous blond in the hot tub at the Hilton. Are all those failures worth the infrequent victories you may ask? The answer lies in the smile on my face and the love in my heart. I will never let you down if crazy is what you expect.

My niece Sensi. One year old Wed. 

Sgt. Luch. Beer = Muscles.... 

Ker, Senegal, Africa 1998... 

I’ll never see your face again

As I clean out my Jeep, tossing water bottles half full, and coffee cups tattooed with lipstick around the rims, I find two umbrellas on the back seat. It takes me a second to remember why they are there and then I see one of your long blond hairs clinging to the black one…

Do you remember rushing into that restaurant when the clouds, cloaked in black, smothered the sun and the rains spilled forth like long glass wands shattering on the streets, creating the clear crystal puddles we hopped hand and hand over? Do you remember the conversation as the first beer came and the first moment went down? Do you remember talking about everything and nothing at all and not even noticing that the sun had already flung the clouds aside and shook the rain from its molten coat and the streets had some time ago dried? I do.

There could have been many more days like that. There should have been more days like that. There shouldn’t have been thoughts about where the days were leading but only that they were. Sometimes the mind works against the moment and skips to moments that have never been and then the moment that we are in is gone. I never expected anything and well I guess I wasn’t disappointed.

Now I stand in the driveway holding the umbrellas and wonder if the rain will ever fall so hard again and if I will even notice the next time I see the sun and the streets are once again dry…

Who wants to blow this joint and go somewhere with Ker where it's warm and the water is so blue that you get cool just looking at it? I need a place like this to go and work. I could finish a book in two weeks here. Yeah, even with a few nights of drinking thrown into the mix...

Daytona says:

...........the meat sandwich I prefer is one that I perfected in Luch's
Harrisburg apartment. Bacon, ground beef (or lamb) burger, chicken
breast................all in the same pan, topped with cheese and
mayo.................this is the one I call the Barnyard. Feel free to
include this patented name in the blog. You have my written permission.

Thanks Daytona. I might have trouble locating the lamb burger though...

Daytona cheating when no one is looking... 

Drunk? I don't even drink... 

The day was pleasant enough with swirls of what looked like wet toilet paper (clouds) hanging in the azure shower curtain that the ancient Egyptians high on gobs of hashish named Sky. I plunged my fist into the icy Nordic waters of the fully stocked wheel barrow and came up clenching a cold bottle of Troegs Hopback. At that moment I wanted to personally hug the two brothers that had crafted this delicious nectar, to bestow upon them the knighthood of inebriation, to adorn their service vans with bows of lilies and festive cartoonish banners but as is usually the case in such ceremonies of pomp time a plenty would be needed and my hourglass had but grains of sand to go.

No, the time was neither appropriate nor was it right, you see I was attending a party for the graduation of a friend and had met amongst the throng of well wishers a most beauteous divinity with legs that stretched like the pure white wood of young dogwood trees to the hips of which I would soon have my eager hands placed about. Her name was Ambika and she could play croquet like a muther fucker…

Daytona's been at the grill too long...

Mark "Fu Manch" Wislon's 96 oz. meal. Lake Winola weekend

Mark "Fu Manchu" Wilson Downing the 96er

My life is starting over again and again and again and again.

I’ve already forgotten about yesterday. Have you?

Where do I start? Why not here…Ker is an emotional cat. Not a crying at sappy movies punk or over sensitive pussy who backs down to a threat but emotional in the fact that he gives a fuck about people and when they don’t treat him right, then he bites railroad ties in half and spits out toasters. He is straight up and plays no one, it hurts his heart when people turn out to be twisted fucks without true emotion. He can’t relate.

So if you don’t have the juice and Ker is feeling ornery then be prepared to be fucking written about. I mean not that I would use real characters so that I might get sued but I will write about people YOU can identify with. Capice? Comprende? Get it? Got it? Good.

If you chose not to know Ker then it’s your loss. The future is wide open and so are his arms. Tone it down…all you ever needed to do was ask. You are fading from my conscience. I’ve erased all your numbers and deleted all your pictures. What is left? Nothing. Just the way I write it. You see SHE is out there and someday I will find her and the world we will travel, my pen I will wield like a great saber, slashing down the words in our adventures. It is after all this modern knight errant’s duty to record every thing through the kaleidoscopes that are his eyes…

Where is my mind

Last night on my deck with my faithful Chihuahuas, Uma and Flea, sitting on my lap I drank Guinness after Guinness in an attempt to reach some kind of semi-conscious karma, to go to that place in which reality was stripped of the stainless steel meat cleaver it wielded. For being a knight errant in modern day times one learns to disarm the enemy in any way possible, even if the enemy dwells with the walls of one’s own head. There is no glory to be won in these battles the only prize being one’s own sanity and the gentle rub of the alcohol as it eases through one’s veins like a lazy barge.

I gazed up at the moon which sat there mocking me in its own way, its full grapefruit like brilliance sucking up the spotlight of the dark show called night, to which I was a lonely spectator with a nose bleed seat. I pondered the possibilities that flitted through my brain like moths moving toward some brilliant light but ultimately like the moths when they reach the light I found I had nowhere to go with them, that these possibilities were only possibilities illuminated and nothing more.

“Fucking cocksuckers,” I yelled as I threw another bottle at the cherry tree that hangs over my deck.

The Chihauahuas howled as the glass shattered and sprinkled over the deck and I thought myself a bastard for riling them up so but I had to do it, outbursts of such a nature where the only way I could fully be sure that I was actually still alive. I had the fucked up feeling that if I didn’t do something, make myself somehow known to the gods that I would fade into oblivion and not even my words would be left.

I tried to phone friends but I’d found none would answer my calls and so I left long drunken messages assuring that the next day I would also be alone. It seemed I’d used all my friends up, had isolated myself, that I was on an island and was drifting further and further out into the sea of anonymity.

I watched as my elderly neighbor fiddled around in his yard, coaxing his dog to piss and playing with the tarp on his pool. In the darkness he moved, only the glint of his glasses reflecting the moonlight and the scuffing of his shoes along the sidewalk gave him away. He could be happy in his trivial chores for his wife awaited him inside his home.

I got up and pissed off the side of the deck and as the urine ran down the side of the cherry tree and mixed with the broken glass and beer my cell phone rang. I snatched it out of my pocket and looked at the display. It was her.

“Hello,” I said.

No answer.

“Hello,” I said again.

Still no answer. I knew then that she wouldn’t speak, that she couldn’t that she was too far gone. I would never see her again. I closed my phone, stretched my arm back and threw it. I watched as it sailed through the air like some sort of mechanical bug and crashed on the road, breaking into a hundred moonlit pieces.

I sat and opened another beer and my Chihuahuas licked he dew off the sides of the can as the moon disappeared behind a clump of gray clouds and everything went black.

Luch in Iraq 2005 - Thinking of you

You were always on my mind...

Art work by Mark "Fu Manchu" Wilson

Ker is back baby. No more melancholy. This life’s to short to get stuck on the ho’s when there’s all you beauties out there. Special thanks to my internet sweetheart Nicky. Totally loving the song. You know which one. You helped Ker when he needed you. Slick the momentary doubts and come back like a bear in an explosives shop. Be the Bear Ty says. Chop Chop to that. And as stated before Ker is an elephant that doesn’t ever forget. The future is wide open. Writing is not only good for the soul, here it is the soul. Okay, on with the show.

Observations in Miniature: People in the gym 10?

If you see yourself amongst these people it might be time to change your gym habits.

Not So Bright Guy – One. Two. Three. Five. Hold on hotshot you just skipped a digit there. If you skip every third rep like that you’re going to be working out for three days straight. What you need is a something like a seeing eye dog. What you need is a smart guy to lead you around the gym. He’s called a trainer. The coffee machine? I think we’d better hold back on the java until we’ve taken a week course on how to pour that shit. I don’t want you walking by me while I’m benching and for you to spill that on my crotch. I think it’s great you’re trying to do the whole body mind thing but you may want to work a little harder on the mind part. Here’s a clue. It doesn’t matter how much you can bench press if you’re out on a date and you don’t know how to tip on a forty dollar dinner bill. No puffing your pecs out like a pit viper isn’t going to get the job done. Maybe you should have paid attention more in school. What? School is for dummies. I think we’re done here. One. Two. Seven. Eight. Carry on…

The Jammer – Enough with the fucking air guitar. This isn’t a fucking Journey concert it’s a fucking gym. I realize you work here and have the remote control to the stereo tethered around your neck but if I here I’m a Material Girl one more fucking time I’m going to throw a 45 pound plate through the CD player. What you are playing is not workout music. It is gay dance club music…I think. Why do you think I wear my headphones all the fucking time? It’s so I can drowned your lousy music out and yes, I am going deaf thank-you very little. At any rate from now on keep your fucking lost in the eighties hands off the fucking stereo. I can’t workout to A Flock of Seagulls one more time before I go seriously ape and do something you’ll regret. Turn up the fucking Killers NOW!

Red Guy – No I’m not talking about Native Americans here, they’re not actually red. You my friend are fucking as red as a fire truck. You have the oddest fucking tone to your skin I’ve ever witnessed. You look like you’ve been dry humping a nuclear reactor. That can’t be the result of tanning. Is that bottled tanning? Are you on the juice? Were you crossbred with a strawberry? Are you fucking staring at me? Word to the wise you full body birthmark I’ve killed tomatoes tougher than you. Why you come in here with a shiny tank top and shorts that are made out of as much material as the collar of Dick Vital’s turtleneck and glare at me is beyond any reason. But seriously I want to help. Come out to my car. In the back I have a gallon of brown stain. What I’ll do so you don’t like a drunk’s nose is paint you from head to toe and while I’m at it I’ll tell you the facts of life which are that I can kick your fucking ass so if you ever glare at me again your worst problem won’t be trying to get that stain out of your hair. Get it? Got it? Good.

Cardio Guru (the triathalon master) - (for my buddy Jay up in Maine) – Sweet mother of Mary are you running on that treadmill in a Speedo? You might need a shoe horn to tuck in your unmentionables somethings hanging out on the left. No your other left. And you don’t have a problem with chaffing? Sure and butter is a good sexual lubricant. What the Hell is the purpose of a triathalon? Swim, ride bike, run. The end you say? That’s the same goal I have with a bottle of beer. I have an idea I’ll race you from my easy chair. I can carb load watching Scooby Doo while your joints are rubbed down into cartilage filings. When we’re done with our “race” I’ll pull you in a wagon to the nearest bar. Sometimes the laziest does win the race.

Sally workout slut – You might want to pull that swatch of nylon out of your crotch that you call shorts, right now its looking like a tiny life raft sinking in a pond of hair. Did I just here a sucking sound when you got up off that bench? Two words: Baby Powder. Here’s a clue. Uh, yeah, please, no more splits. You aren’t fucking tantalizing, you’re gross. You look like a cross dressing rooster. Quit hitting on the twenty year old guys. The only thing you’re going to pick up in here is athletes foot on your ass because 90% of that tugboat is touching the surface of the machines that I unfortunately want to use. If you want to hook up put on some clothes and go to a BAR! I’m sure you will be able to find a guy drunk enough there to think your deflated hot water bottle teets and the mole the size of a donut hole on your chin is alluring.

Father Son combo - Spending “quality time” with the son are we? Good for you Goober. How old is that toothpick of a kid? Seven? Do you see how is arms are hyper extending under the weight of that bar? That’s not exercise that is child abuse. You do know that with the Gomer Pile genetics you’re sporting that his odds of becoming the next QB for the Packers is about as likely Jim Morrison showing up for a Doors reunion. Stop yelling at him this isn’t boot camp! How would you like me to come up with a bull horn and yell at you while you’re doing your five pound leg extensions? Let me guess, you were never more than third string on any little league or high school team. I know I’m right you didn’t need to tell me that. So, how do we remedy this situation before junior here goes whacko and clubs the opposing pitcher over the head with an aluminum bat because he strikes out? Let me tell you how. Lay the fuck off. The world isn’t run by star athletes. George W. Bush was a cheerleader for God’s sake. Sure the star athletes get the chicks and I know you married a woman that looks like Bea Arthur and you want more for your seed but the fame is only a flash in the pan of life. So take your kid fishing or introduce him to the classics. No you moron the classics aren’t a type of aerobics class. They’re…forget it.

To my #1 fan. I still internet love your smile.

Luch in Iraq 2005 the Iditarod

On Dasher on Dancer on Prancer on Comet on Cupid...the reason your sled ran aground is because you're racing it in the DESERT! You took a wrong turn at Luxenburg. Luch who is this guy? You need to boss your troops around a little better.

Luch in Iraq.

Okay, you're not guarding anything. Now what are you doing? Call me crazy but it looks like you're staring at this guy's ass. I know it's been a long time without a woman but come on. And on another note. Those roads look a Hell of a lot better than anything around here. In fact I have a pot hole in front of my house that swallowed one of those little yellow school buses a few days ago.

Go on do what you have to do

In this perverse place.

In this, the end times.

As I gaze out across the sea of tears in which the wreckage of broken dreams sit half submerged and rotting, bashed up against the rocks of hope in a storm of your making, as the last grain of sand falls and my lease expires—yes I’m sure, I see my signature there in warm Jello—I get up as if to go but I can’t feel my spine so for the moment I stay. You hand me a beer and it slides through my finger tips and the glass bottle breaks on the edge of your heart. I try to glue the bottle back together with small talk; I want to save the feeling the booze gave me the first day I met you but that too is draining into that sea. I have to go I say and when I touch you on the shoulder you flop to the ground; a cardboard cutout just like me. I upright you, dust you off. We need kindling I say. But nothing ever lived here you say and I know you’re right nothing could live here. I dump over my filing cabinet and crumple the contents around me. Go now I say and you make to go. They were only dreams you say as you disappear over the ridge. But they were mine I yell but of course it’s too late you are someone else now. I strike the first match and drop it into the mountain of words around me. Nothing. I strike the second match and drop it. Nothing. I take out my flame thrower and this time there is fire. As my world burns up around me I think of sticking my fingers up inside you, the fire now at my neck feels like your kisses, the sizzle is like your whispers in my melting ears. I wonder who you are now as I burn. It is then that I notice some of my dreams are missing amongst the wreckage. I thought I noticed something in your back pocket as you disappeared over that ridge. I hope they treat you better than you treated yourself. The fire is the only thing I see…burn baby burn.

It’s the little things that matter most.

The globules of toad spit on the green blades of grass were illuminated by the sun and looked like the glitter on a pimp’s cape. I pressed my morning hard on against the screen in the back door and the hinges creaked like the spine of an arthritic chamber maid. The air had the faint tang of burning oil and rotting fruit in it and I gazed up at the ever expanding hole in the ozone layer. My inner factions agreed it was a beautiful world gone bad; a magical place smogged under by the corporate Jesus freaks and their belief that paving everything under would make it easier for them to drive their gold plated Hummers over on their way to the Pearly Gates.

I sipped from my coffee and looking into my mug I saw my reflection in the rich black beverage. It sort of looked like the velvet Elvis painting on my dentist’s office wall. I thought how I was ever so gradually drifting towards the ultimate blackness, the closed eyed decay that strips the meat from our bones, that leaks the images from our brains, that dries the love in our hearts. At all costs I would battle this blackness. I would charge it with my lance again and again and again until it lay defeated at my Burmese Jungle booted feet. Yes, you ask but what if I failed to slay the beast? Well, I had a plan for that too. A second more scientific way to attain immortality and it went something like this: I would record my every thought, jot down the sequencing of my DNA, store it in a computer and shoot it off in a rocket aimed at the next galaxy. Surely some mad outer space creature would run across it one day whilst out jetting inbetween the stars in his pimped out Vlectan 350 (Yeah the cherry red one). What would then go down next would be the locking of hard drives, the spinning of my digitalized brain stem and then the rebuilding of my soul in stainless steel. But as is my nature I digress…

“Come on,” I yelled to my Chihuahuas who were chasing squirrels out onto the road in front of the daily precession of exhaust spitting automobiles as they careened towards the elevators and escalators of the city.

Splat!

A cloud of gray fur and exhaust hung in the morning sky.

“That’s all folks,” I said.

* * *

With a strong eastwardly wind at my back, which caused my cotton madras shirt to billow out like the sail of some wayward pirate vessel, I made for my Cherokee via my cracked brick sidewalk. With my hands shaking I threw open the driver’s side door and jumped inside. Nestled firmly in the cracked leather seats I pounded down on the gas and ripping up fists full of gravel I shot out onto the road and was officially on my way.

The route to work would devastatingly routine and to brace myself against such banality I would need to make one stop before I reached the downtown and my office and this side adventure would be located in-between the four prefabricated walls of the nearby Seven Eleven. You see my caffeine levels were running dangerously low and if I was to brace myself against the predictability of yet another humdrum day I would need the help of my little caffeinated friend. My veins weren’t rattling like oyster shells in a muffler but my mind wasn’t fully evading the stillness that threatened to take it over, wasn’t running from the Reaper’s sickle; the cocksucker threatened to slice it in half like a honeydew melon if I slowed for even a moment. I had to keep moving, every single molecule of my compressed soul demanded it.

As I opened the door to the Seven Eleven the stale air conditioned air poured over my skin like a some sort of crazy industrial soup. I could feel its staleness clogging my pours. I shivered and proceeded forward.

The Pakistani owner behind the cash register winked at me and patted at his stringy comb-over. I nodded. Yeah, it was weird but the fuck if I know what their traditions were and so focused in on the miniature city of coffee makers on the counter in the far corner. There was enough caffeine there to jump start Walt Disney’s cryogenically preserved corpse.

As I passed the aisles I could help but take in those that occupied them like stuffed animals in a wealthy industrialist’s study. There was the usual down trodden; the state workers in polo shirts and khaki slacks, with the clickers going off in their heads; 5, 735 days until retirement. Click. 5734 days until retirement. Click. 5733 days until retirement. Click. I wondered if that was really a life or if it was just a replica of one.

An elderly black gentleman in a blue striped seersucker suit and a Panama hat was leaning over the counter scratching madly at instant lottery tickets. “Muther fucker,” he said, straightening and then tossing the tickets in the trash can beside the cash register.

A fat little boy ran by me, his legs jiggling from under his short pants, Snickers bars piled in his arms. I thanked God that recent reports indicated Americans did NOT have a weight problem. It was good to know every other person I saw wasn’t obese but rather I was seeing things.

This place was weirding me out. I needed to get my coffee and get the fuck out of there before I became one of them, before I lost my identity and was sucked into the anonymity of the everyman. This was the kind of place no one ever left. If I came back in ten years all the same people would still be there doing the exact same things. I needed to get out sooner than now. I ran towards the coffee machines.

I fumbled with the cups and lids trying to find a match.

“Why the fuck don’t they label these things,” I grumbled.

“That would be too easy.”

I started at the dirty floor and worked my way up, taking in the long tan legs, the knee length navy blue skirt and jacket, the curvaceous hips, the creases of her nether place, the swelling breasts. I locked on her lips and canvassed her eyes like they were an open bank vault filled with the green emeralds and I was a safe cracker.

“Gorgeous,” I said.

“Thank-you,” she said, shyly looking away.

“Right,” I said. “Can I buy you a coffee?”

“I already have a coffee,” she said.

“How about a Danish? I hear the cheese Danishes are very…uh, fresh.”

“Thanks, but I don’t eat refined carbs.”

“Me either I prefer the unrefined carbs, you know roughage and all.”

“I bet you do,” she said and turned, making for the cash register.

I was desperate. She’d stolen my heart in nanoseconds; dipped it in her coffee and taken a bite out of it like it was powdered donut. I needed to wrestle my heart out of her throat with my tongue, to join our souls at the hips, to wrap myself around her like a boa constrictor and never ever let go…unless of course I found someone hotter.

“Hey,” I said, lightly tapping her shoulder. “Here.”

I thrust one of my business cards at her. She took it and glanced at it quickly.

“A writer,” she said, “I’ll remember that.”

I wanted to follow after her but suddenly I felt like I shouldn’t. Something wasn’t right. I was being WATCHED! I could smell the smoke from the eyes burning through the back of my shirt. I turned on my heels like a gunslinger and there he stood; prim, proper, stuffy. In short all I despised in a human.

He hurried to the counter and stood beside HER! He slipped his reptilian hand around her hips.

“Cocksucker,” I said under my breath.

“What is that?” the guy asked, looking at the card in her hand.

“That guy is a writer. He gave me his card,” she said turning it over in her delicate white hands.

“He couldn’t do anything important,” the guy said loud enough for me to hear.

I turned; my eyes two molten replicas of hatred’s own. I looked the guy up and I looked him down. The cut of his suit was perfect, aerodynamic, possibly designed by Divinci and let loose in the computer terminal of some space age tailor. If he had a propeller up his ass I’m pretty sure he would have been able to fly with little to no wind resistance.

Be quiet,” the woman said.

I shuffled up towards the line behind them scuffing my Burmese Jungle boots on the ground so as to cause a distraction but just as I was about to get in line behind them the fat kid with the Snickers bars butted in line in front of me.

“Hey kid I was in line first,” I said.

“Were not,” he said, chocolate on his lower lip.

“Look free Ding Dongs,” I said.

The fat kid turned and I stole his place in line.

“Hey there’s no free Ding Dongs,” he said.

“Someone must have gotten the last ones. Maybe if you weren’t so heavy you could have beaten the last person to get the free Ding DOngs,” I said.

The guy in the suit turned towards me.

“Was that necessary?” he said in possibly the most condescending voice I’d ever experienced.

“Actually it was. I’m concerned about the kid’s weight. Three or four more years of pounding chocolate like that and his parents will have to roll him around on an industrial dolly,” I said.

She looked at me and smiled; her lips like great merlot filled zeppelins. I puckered involuntarily for the need to lock lips with her.

“Are you mocking me?” the guy said.

“Of course, it is after all my nature,” I said and winked at her.

“You’d better get a grip on reality pal. You’re nothing in this world. I’m somebody. What you say and what you think don’t mean anything. I make the wheels turn,” he said and swiped at his slick back hair.

“Tricycle wheels?

“Do you see what I’m driving out there?” he said, his face reddening.

“A milk truck?”

“Not the milk truck you idiot. That BMW, the 760Li Sedan. Something you will never have.”

“Stop it Peter,” she said. “You’re being a complete ass. I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to be sorry. By your definition I’m nothing and that’s just fine with me because by my definition you’re nothing.”

“Whose next?” the Pakistani store owner asked, his comb over hanging in his eyes.

“Go ahead,” she said, gesturing me around them, “I need to get something else.”

I set my coffee on the counter and fished the small leather bound notebook I kept my cash in out of my pants pocket.

“And the Snickers bars that kid back there has,” I said.

I paid and made for the doors.

“Hey mister,” the fat kid said.

“Yeah?” I said turning.

“Thanks,” the kid said looking guiltily at his candy.

“No, I’m sorry for saying that stuff I was worked up over something else. I was husky when I was your age. I mean I didn't have the rolls thing going on but I can sympathize. I know it can be hard...I was a fucking idiot.”

“I don’t want to be fat,” he said.

“I’ll tell you what. You know where Bruno’s Gym is down by the mall?”

“Yeah?”

“Meet me there at five. We’ll work on getting you into shape,” I said and guzzled from my coffee.”

“Okay,” he said.

In my car I turned the key in the ignition. There was a sharp rap at my window. I looked out. It was HER. She had something in her hand. I rolled my window down.

“Here,” she said, handing me her card.

“Let’s get a drink tonight after work,” she said.

“I can’t I have a date with the fat kid at the gym,” I said.

“Are you going to stay there all night?” she said with a smile.

“No?”

“Eight o’clock at McDuffy’s?”

“Right,” I said and she was gone.

I rolled up my window and slammed my car in reverse nearly taking out the fat kid who was busy unwrapping a Snickers.

I didn’t know where any of this was leading but I knew I’d done at least one thing right this morning and for me that was one more than I usually got in during the course of a day. Yeah, there were blue skies on the horizon and yes I would probably fuck things but I had that moment and really that’s all that really mattered.

I waved to the fat kid and tore out onto the highway.

The Last Seven Searches That Landed People On My Blog

nudist people in gym

nudist people in the gym

through flesh it sheers hidden amongst it's peers.

volkswagen bug yellow with purple flames

nudist blog

atomicblueblog.blogspot.com

knickers hairy

*It seems I'm hitting it off big with the nudists. If I write nudist on here ten more times will I get a lot more nudist searches? Nudist. Nudist. Nudist. Nudist...

*I don't even want to know what the person that typed "knickers hairy" was looking for. Yikes.

Luch in Iraq 2005 - Guard Duty II

Again, I'm going to have to ask what you're guarding. I don't think anyone is going to steal those pebbles. Of course I'm no expert in matters of the desert but I know you've been complaining a lot about the heat. So let me offer you a little advice. Perhaps if you removed the winter coat and camouflage bib your body temp might drop 20 degrees or so. Just a suggestion. Of course I'm no expert but...

No, I'm not drunk. I always stand out in the rain smoking a cigar... 

Billy Barue former WWF superstar?

It’s not personal. It’s life.

Some people hide behind words because they are cowering little shadows in the light of the day, in light of what they are, in light of what they want to be—bent over a dream and taking it hard from reality. They live in corners of their parent’s basement, stroking IT (EGO to Id mayday) and when they peak at other’s WORDS, and there are no fireworks for them, no girlfriends amongst the mildew, only their calloused hands to Internet love, frustration causes them to lash out from behind thick layers of poorly chosen words; somewhere over the border, where it is safe to be young and naive. You don’t have the time. Tic. Tock. Cut me open and see the rings of words that go back until I was a seedling, the drought years, the years of heavy rain, the scars that cut through to the core of my dusty soul.

I remove my EGO and stand bare in front of my words, my modifier dangling for all to see. There is nothing behind my words that I don’t place in front of my words. Nothing up my sleeve, nothing in my hands but you watch closely and abra fucking cadabra I pull it out and you wonder from where. Scratch your hater head and I laugh at the hollow sound that indicates the absence of anything worth spitting on. Come close and I will let you in on a little secret…that’s it…a little closer…you are nothing to me. Now go, grow, prove that there are walls outside your basement bedroom. I don’t hate you. There’s nothing there yet to hate…please make me hate you someday.

*To all my blogging clique you showed me much Internet Love (Copyright Superbadass 2005) and Kerouaced is an elephant that never forgets.

Check out my little buddy Cuke. http://coolasacucumber.blogspot.com/ She needs the Internet Love because sometimes the world shows its big yellow teeth and threatens to swallow you. She's got words...

Luch in Iraq 2005 - Guard Duty

Uh, what exactly are you guarding way out there? Tumbleweeds? And for God's sake stop rubbing your rifle and saying, "Oh, Billy Barue."

Used toupees for sale - the whole scary story

My friends know I’m the kind of guy that would give them the toupee off my head if they suddenly found themselves without hair, had a cold scalp or needed a spare coaster to set their beer on…not that I wear a toupee but you get the point. You don’t? Well let me explain.

One fine fucking Sunday morning I threw my duffel bag in my Cherokee and made for my gym for a late morning workout. I prefer Sundays at the gym because the hipster, latte sucking BMW drones are safely out of town visiting their summer beach houses and rubbing their faces up against the oily newsprint of the Wall Street Journal. Only the hardcore gym junkies forsake Jesus and vacation and make the pilgrimage to the only place in which they worship, a place where they can gaze into the primordial sweat that pools in the low sagging parts of the floor and see the ugly fading flesh of their once youthful faces staring back at them. No one really defies age. We all lose to that cocksucker named time, who is holding us up in the air by our jock straps and mocking us.

The gym business isn’t a pretty one no matter how much pastel paint you cover it with nor how many juice bars you try to bury it under. You can line the walls with posters of spandex clad beauties and change the mirrors to funhouse mirrors so the slobs will look at themselves and see long lean impressions and believe that the box of Twinkies they pound on a daily basis is A-O-Fucking-Kay but the ugliness runs much deeper, runs like a swift moving stream of puss to the doorstep of every business’s whoremaster--THE BOTTOM LINE--and in the gym it pimps out its stair steppers and cast iron dumbbells to anyone that will drop a cold hard dime in its calloused palm.

* * *

So, I made my way into the gym that Sunday morning and parked under a massive oak tree so the birds didn’t have to exert too much effort when shitting on my freshly washed vehicle.

Inside the dimly lit gym there was a small but dedicated group of odd balls working out on a variety of machines. It was good to see that not only the “perfect” people liked to test the tensile strength of their abdominal walls and grind their joints into arthritic knobs.

“Hey, what’s up?” the guy behind the desk said.

This guy was all neck and about one pineapple short of a full smoothie bar. He was the type that gnaws on rusty chains and farts out ten penny nails as a hobby. I’m sure the zits as big as acorns on his shoulders were just left over teenage acne they couldn’t have been a result of a pharmaceutically enhanced physique. Or am I just being naive?

“Right,” I said and made a B-line for the locker room. Talk about protein drinks and tanning booths, the outreaching limits of his conversational repertoire, tended to put me in a fitness coma.

In the locker room I threw on my gym shorts and T-shirt in record time, thirty-two seconds to be exact. I know because I timed it with my stop watch. You see I always spend minimal time in the locker room because there’s a certain element that lingers there and feels that there’s no need to wear a towel to cover up their nudity. I’m no prude but when I’m sitting on a bench tying my shoe I really don’t fucking appreciate your dick swinging in front of my fucking face as you walk by on your way to the showers. Get it? Got it? Good.

After a quick warm up on the treadmill I headed over to the free weights and began doing curls while checking out the ass of the aerobics instructor that was giving a class across the gym. As my luck would have it she did a full spin and caught me staring. I smiled. What else could I do? She gave me the finger.

“I thought you were someone’s ass that I knew,” I said, setting down my barbell. “Bitch,” I said under my breath.

I turned towards the cardiovascular equipment when I heard a strange raspy breathing. My first instincts told me that it was some wild beast that had stowed away in the air-conditioning ducts during the night and had just managed to remove the last of the screws in the vent cover and was now running madly about, blood and saliva spilling from its long yellow fangs.

I was wrong.

On one of the treadmills I noticed a guy that was about fifty-five laboring like he was carrying a fully stocked mini-bar and two top heavy pole dancers on his back. His skin was the shade of a pickled cow’s tongue and his lips—Mic Jaggeresque--looked like they’d been wrapped around a bottle Yoohoo since birth but the thing that stood out most about him was not something mother nature had brewed up in her kitchen, no, not this jet black toupee. It was obviously not his natural hair but some strange chemical concoction developed in a laboratory and sewn together in a doll factory. No matter what type of super adhesive held that skinned rat’s ass to his scalp and no matter if it would stay put during the roughest of Tsunamis I knew it was a phony.

I watched in fascination as Mr. Toupee seemed to lose more and more steam and gradually began bending at the waist. I was about to go over and ask him if something was wrong when suddenly his legs folded up, his body crumpled and he flew off the back of the treadmill.

Generally speaking Mr. Toupee should have landed on the thinly carpeted floor behind the treadmill but on this day there was a special bit of padding awaiting his flight and it was in the form of a two-hundred and seventy pound woman clad in full body, rolls hanging, spandex.

“Umph,” Ms. Spandex said as Mr. Toupee knocked her to the ground and then laid across her ample bussoms; she screamed, she bucked, she spun, she whinnied like a quarter horse. “Get off me you pervert,” she cried.

To the untrained eye it looked as if Mr. Hairpiece was trying to ride Ms. Stretchpants like some sort of pie eyed pervert but I knew better for I’d witnessed the debacle from the onset.

“He’s got a hard on,” Ms. Stretchpants yelled.

With a mighty heave Ms. Stretchpants kicked Mr. Hairpiece off and his gigantic hard on was exposed…of course to the trained eye it looked a Hell of a lot more like a Walkman than a penis but what the Hell do I know? I only own one so my experience is limited but I know I can’t play a cassette tape on mine and stick a headphone jack in the end isn’t something I’d advise.

“I just got attacked by a dead guy,” Ms. Stretchpants cried. Her eyes shot out like helium filled golf balls and she began kicking Mr. Hairpiece in the side and the leg.

“Whoa, stop it,” I said coming up to Mr. Hairpieces defense. “He’s not moving.”

I set my gym back down and felt Mr. Toupees neck for a pulse. Nothing. Suddenly Mr. Hairpiece shot up and bucked and churned. His hairpiece came dislodged and flew through the air like a hairy Frisbee. Then he fell limp again in my arms.

“Someone call an ambulance,” I yelled. “I think this guy just had a heart attack.”

Mr. IQ at the front desk began rapidly dialing the phone. A semi-circle of the few gym members in attendance that day formed around me.

“We need to do CPR,” I cried.

Ms. Stretchpants took a step back. “He violated me,” she said, crossing her arms over her breasts as if protecting them from a giant nursing baby.

“He was out cold,” I said.

“I’ll help,” Mr. IQ said.

Thank God that dim bastard come over when he did. I wasn’t about to look lips with this guy even to save his life and besides they were so big I didn’t know if I could properly seal them anyway. Mr. IQ pulled out one of those respirator type pumps, placed it over Mr. Hairpiece’s mouth and pumped it twice. I preformed the proper chest pumping and we were in business.

When the ambulance arrived Mr. Hairpiece was semi-conscious and breathing on his own again. I later heard he died on the way to the hospital. Rumor has it he was grasping for his hairpiece.

Ms. Stretchpants tried to file a police report against Mr. Hairpiece but I intervened and made it out like she attacked him on the treadmill and gave him a heart attack. She backed down.

When I got home I dropped my duffel bag on the floor and flopped on the couch emotionally drained. I opened a beer and turned on the television when out of the corner of my eye I saw my Chihuahua Flea batting something black around on the floor. My first reaction was that it was a varmint of some sort, possibly a mole. I grabbed a Golf Digest off the coffee table and made to splatter the little beast but then I realized what it was that Flea was batting around. It was Mr. Hairpiece’s toupee. It must have landed in my gym bag and Flea had rooted it out.

“Get back,” I cried.

I got the fireplace poker and picked the toupee up with it. It was more hideous than I’d imagined but after some time alone with the little fella I became somewhat used to it and even managed to hold it in my hand. I petted it like an alley cat.

“Nice hairpiece,” I said.

I put the hairpiece on my Chihuahua Flea but it made him look too much like Hitler. I spread it out on my coffee table and set my beer on it but out of the corner of my eye I kept thinking I saw a tarantula. My other Chihuahua Uma and I played fetch with it for a while but it caused her to hack terribly so we stopped that game. Eventually I put it on the Beethoven bust on my mantle and it sits there to this day and every time I look up at it I think of Moe of the Three Stooges.