Intertubes Confessional # 5

I didn’t shave this morning and my secretary noticed and she asked why and I told her that I overslept but that was a lie because I simply forgot because I broke out of my normal bathroom routine this morning because I finally decided that enough is enough and I used the dog’s mat breaker to comb out the impenetrable jungle thicket that had formed between my ass cheeks and I wasn’t about to volunteer that information and tell her that I would have used a machete if only I had one handy even though doing so would have posed a considerable risk since it can be hard sometimes to see the forest for the trees.

Let's Go Exploring . . . In Real Time!

How about an adventure? Here’s what I’m going to do. I’ve got a hardcopy of a judicial opinion on my desk. It’s stapled and folded back to somewhere in the middle. From the right-hand column, from the first full paragraph, I’m going to take the second word. Then, from the second paragraph, I’ll take the third word, and so on, until I get to the bottom.

Then I’ll Google the result and I’ll link to the hit that is one more than the number of search terms.

Ready? Let’s go!

<< it . . . versus . . . ratify . . . Atlantic >>

Here is the Google results list.

And here is the result one greater than four.

Okay, I lied . . . so sue me.

Found Scribbled on the Back of an Envelope

THIS sounds like a job for . . .
Nonsense Rhyme Cheerleader Man!!!
(A copyrighted feature of this blog):

Kitty cat, butter fat, Simoniz® a car.
Sow an oat, Float a boat, drink a glass of tar.

Gooooooooooooo TEAM!!!

Random Movie Lines # 31

"Hyman Roth always makes money for his partners. One by one, our old friends are gone; death (natural or not), prison, deported. Hyman Roth is the only one left because he always made money for his partners."

Penumbral Emanations

This cartoon is by the tremendously talented John Caldwell, one of my absolute all-time favorites.

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 11

Thunder Blender # 17

(1) Baby bump

(2) Significant other

(3) 192.5 pounds

(4) "Man Bites Man"

(5) Mirror --> Decision --> Ostrich --> Saul Steinberg

(6) "The Disturbing Case of the Formidable Vagina"

(7) William F. George

(8) Walnut vernacular spectacular

(9) Ticky bugs timepieces of eighteen wheeler

(10) Every inch of my love

Unspeakable Visions of the Individual # 6

The theme song to “Curb Your Enthusiasm” morphs seamlessly into “A Man and a Woman” in my miiiiiiiiiiiiind!!!!1!!!!!1!!!!

You don't say!

A Modest Tribute to Ben-Hur Gazzara

It was here that Althouse said she found “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” to be a boring movie. I can see where she’s coming from. The pacing was designed to more closely approximate that of real life and if you don’t find Ben Gazzara’s portrayal engrossing, then there’s not much else to hold your attention. If you don’t like watching a baseball game from the stands then skip this one. There is no chariot race.

But Mrs. Bissage and I both thought it was a really good movie. I liked how Mr. Gazzara played an earthy guy who was, at first blush, a scuzzball but who was actually a gentleman. He’s no wimp, but he gets into trouble with the mob because he is naïve in how he lives his seedy life and in how he runs his sleazy business.

What’s his business? Well, it’s a smallish nightclub, and patrons come for the topless burlesque show. It occurred to me from time to time that some of the T & A in the movie was gratuitous. But it worked overall because it showed that Mr. Gazzara’s character was rather ordinary as neither a letch nor a saint.

And maybe that’s what I liked most about “The Killing of a Chinese Bookie” and “A Woman Under the Influence.” They run counter to those movie conventions we’re all so very used to like the hunky Charlton Heston enunciating with his booming stage voice and pantomiming his emotions for the back of the house. That clichéd showbiz command for actors to MAKE-IT-BIG holds no validity and the command is instead to “lose the cornball.” The result is an inverse kind of cinema, a negative kind of cinema, where you have to understand the situation to fully appreciate what IS NOT being said and done.

Consistent with this, the movie ends with a life-or-death struggle that has no resolution and I’m a real sucker for that sort of thing. After all, reality is the stuff of fiction.

Bissage Says Relax

My Apologies

I would be posting more often except I am suffering from mid-life crisis and have become overwhelmed by indecision.

The good news is I have it narrowed down to: (1) becoming a civil war reenactor or (2) starting up an aquarium for fancy goldfish.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?

Deep.

Morning's Delight

Yesterday I enjoyed a great big heaping breakfast bowl of oatmeal. It was the first of the cold weather season.

Then there was dinnertime’s liberal application of Tabasco sauce.

Afterwards, I consumed a couple of Fig Newtons while watching the Phillies clobber the Dodgers.

A troublesome night’s sleep, some nightmares, and then today’s breakfast of shredded wheat.

That would bring us up to the present, except for that tumultuous event that occurred between the shredded wheat and the time I finally got to sit down at the computer to type this out.

Stupendous!

Bissage Learns to Dress Himself

This post at Sippican Cottage, caused me to write what follows:

I was a high school kid back in the 1970s. There was this kiosk at the mall where you bought a tee-shirt and they’d use an iron to put a rubbery decal on it. I picked one that purported to have something to do with the current Rolling Stones world tour. It was a flying eagle with jet engines under its wings and I thought it looked pretty cool.

That tee-shirt was something I could barely afford and I certainly didn’t have the money to go to a Rolling Stones concert. After a handful of wearings, I finally decided I was acting like a phony. Besides, the picture was starting to seem kind of dumb and it was peeling off, anyway.

The biggest problem, though, was the tee-shirt, itself. It was too tight and it had really small arm holes and I’d get these enormous, dark, smelly, pit stains under my arms the size of dinner plates. I existed in a clingy state of perpetual dampness. I had become a human swamp.

So it turned out I’d wasted money, which stung. But I learned a valuable lesson and there was a bright side. At least I didn’t splurge at that mall kiosk and buy the Rolling Stones world tour underpants.

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 10

Cartoon by Christopher Browne

Some Saturday Morning Unpleasantness

Because of this post at the wonderfully wide-ranging Althouse, I got curious about the films of John Cassavetes. Last night, Mrs. Bissage and I watched “A Woman Under the Influence” (1974).

It was maybe a little bit too long (2 ½ hours) and it is not for everyone. By that I mean . . . well, what am I trying to say? Well, I'm not quite sure. How about this: You know how they say people eat hot chiles or go bungie jumping or rock climbing and stuff because they need to experience a more primal and dangerous world? They get a buzz from the danger?

Well, you can watch "A Woman Under the Influence" for pretty much the same effect. I got the following from Wikipedia:

When Richard Dreyfuss appeared on “The Mike Douglas Show” with Peter Falk, he described the film as “the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie” and added, “I went crazy. I went home and vomited,” which prompted curious audiences to seek out the film capable of making Dreyfuss ill.

Now, it’s pretty much a cliché for actors to say things like that – and a lot of ordinary people get turned off by that sort of crafty boast – but that’s not too far off the mark, IMHO. If you grew up in an emotionally chaotic, fucked-up family, you’ll relate to the movie probably too much. Maybe it'll work out the same even if you didn't.

In the scene that follows, run-of-the-mill housewife Gena Rowlands has just come home from a psychiatric hospital and her family is having a little get-together. It goes badly. Peter Falk is her husband. The guy with the glasses and the slicked back hair is the physician who committed her (a lovely scene, that) and the guy at the end of the table is her asswipe of a father. The kind, but weak, lady is her mother.

Everyone is packing her in too tight and she can't breathe. Feel the claustrophobia. Feel the selfishness. Feel the utter cluelessness. Feel the dysfuntion, the desperation, and the way some invisible but tremendous force -- beyond anyone’s control -- crashes people together, and then hurls them apart, again and again and again.

As I said before, it’s unpleasant. You have to be fairly serious about cinema and willing to take a risk to seek this stuff out. Personally, I recommend you don’t click on the link. Here it is, anyway.

P.S. We watched the Criterion documentary on Cassavetes' maybe a week ago. It was unhelpful. We eventually shut it off because it was little more than a parade of interviews with actors saying how much Cassavetes' work was all about LOVE. Well, it took me a long time to figure out what those actors were all talking about. That force I mentioned a second ago? That force that crashes people into each other and then tears them apart? Actors call that LOVE. And that's pretty much why I got out of "THE THEATER."

Paying It Forward

There are people who make this world a much more interesting place.

You seldom get to know anything at all about these people or what they do; the problem being largely a matter of time and space.

But now there's the internet, so things are getting better.

Case in point: RUNNING FROM CAMERA.

Dig it.

Our Affair was a Bust

The photograph is by Diane Keaton. It is Plate IX from her book "Reservations." It is entitled "The Doral Hotel on the Ocean, Miami Beach."

A Morning's Lament

Today’s breakfast was a crappy supermarket bagel with crappy unsalted butter and crappy orange marmalade. It all got washed down with an imperial pint of diet Dr. Pepper, which tastes pretty crappy.

My stomach is a toxic waste dump.

I oughta be shot.

Be Gone, Foul Temptress!!1!!!1!!!!!!!!

Same as all of us enpenised individuals, we know he struggled valiently to maintain his virtue but . . .Oh, I know that she . . . has made a fool of him . . . like girls have done so many nights before . . . time and time again.

There's gonna be no dancing when they get home.

And remember people, you can't spell Cynthia without a little sin.

Time Flies Like an Arrow

And fruit flies like a banana. Good grief. Here it is Tuesday and my last post was last Friday. Whodathunkit?

I've still got nothing to say -- and I've already used a Beatles song to say that -- so let's go in another direction.Wait. Maybe I have something to say, after all.

Over at Althouse, there are sometimes blog posts that generate comments along the lines of "women are like this" or "men are like that."

Such generalizations need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Better they should be set to music.

For Science!!!

I have been conducting a scientific survey, so please let me begin this blog post with some actual survey responses from some actual survey respondents:

(1) “You idiot! You’ve really gone and done it this time.”
-- Mrs. Bissage

(2) “What the hell is wrong with you? Get that thing away from me!”
-- One of the women in Mrs. Bissage’s book club

(3) “Pull up your pants right now, you freak, or I swear to God I’ll call the cops!”
-- Some lady in a parking lot trying to put groceries in her car

Yes, my internet friends, as you have already surely surmised, I have been field-testing the results of my homemade penis ointment. Those 100% accurate quotes, set out above, prove beyond all reasonable doubt that I am well on my way to a Nobel Prize® in Chemistry.

You will all be pleased to hear that my dong has grown a full four inches in length (as well as four inches in girth!), and that it is now a frightening mottle of pink, white, greenish-blue and red. There are barbed spines as well as an array of bony, scale-like plates.

There has been some cracking and bleeding, and I wish I could get the thing to go back down so I can pee, but hey, who needs to consume liquids, anyway? And besides, the tailor has already altered all my business suits.

What matters most is that I am in proud possession of what is, incontestably, one of the world's great, supernaturally impressive, rock hard boners!

And that's what I call WINNING!!!1!!!1!!

Here’s some background, in case you think I am just making all this up.

Nobel prize committee, here we come!

One for [R]icpic

THIS sounds like a job for . . .
Nonsense Rhyme Cheerleader Man!!!
(a copyrighted feature of this blog):

Dopamine, Soft Machine, core aerate your lawn.
Wooden knob, get a job, lip sync “Delta Dawn.”

Gooooooooooooo TEAM!

My Burning Ring of Fire

Last night we watched the movie “Walk the Line.” It was about Johnny Cash and it was pretty bad -- one big show biz biopic cliché after another. Most of it was “Behind the Music” on VH1 without the redemptive self-parody. Bland, bland, bland. Mr. Cash’s estate must have had creative control with an eye toward marketing products like Folsom Prison Blue Jeans and Orange Blossom Special Air Freshener.

Joaquin Phoenix does a good enough job. But a lot of that seems to be the result of his spending weeks in the bathroom, drunk out of his mind, making slack-jawed scowls at himself in the mirror, repeating out loud, over and over again, “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

Don’t get me started on Reese Witherspoon. Who knew June Carter was a reticent ditz in need of a chaperone? In all fairness to Ms. Witherspoon, I can’t blame her for fouling up the sex scene. Johnny Cash must have been hung like a bear.

Anyway, I hate to be a poop head, so let me say something nice. Some of the movie was okay. For example, I liked the “Man in Black” sequence. That was where they were driving in a car and it turns into a high tech rocket car and they play Elvis Presley while driving all over the ceiling of the Holland tunnel. “Elvis is not dead. He just went home.” Ha! That was great.

A Mutually Supportive Relationship

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 9

Where is Everybody?

The place is here. The time is now. And the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch could be our journey.

You see, we can feed the stomach with concentrates. We can supply microfilm for reading, recreation, even movies of a sort. We can pump oxygen in and waste material out.

But there's one thing we can't simulate that's a very basic need: Man's hunger for companionship. The barrier of loneliness. That's one thing we haven't licked yet.

So whoever you are -- out there in the real world -- reading this blog entry, I hope you are never too lonely.

I also hope you are a fan of the old "The Twilight Zone."

It turned 50 years old, today.

Roman Polanski Buggered My Sister!!!

The year was 1975. We were all just kids but we knew that Uncle Paul was a very busy man and it was always a special treat whenever he stopped by for a visit. He gave my Mom forty bucks and sent her out to pick up the Chinese food he ordered.

He said he was going to make my little sister a big star but I really couldn’t tell for sure what was going on in the bedroom. Maybe acting lessons or a screen test or something. All I know for sure is that Uncle Paul came out after a while, and then he made me a highball and let me smoke a cigarette. It was GREAT!!!

He left just before Mom got home and he said, “Consider yourself lucky, kid. If you can’t get a girl, then a cute, chubby boy will do. Remember that, kid.”

I might not be remembering that exactly right because I was pretty dizzy by then.

But I do remember that Mom was really pissed off when she got back home and saw that Uncle Paul didn’t leave an envelope on the kitchen counter like all the times before.

He never stopped by for a visit after that.

My Mom said he died in a plane crash over the ocean, but now I know that she told a lie.

Grownups are funny.

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 8

Sunday Morning Looking Down

I was walking across a highway overpass when I came across a tiny, little vole. It was on its back, moving its little legs in slow motion. It looked like it did not realize it was upside down with its little white belly facing straight up.

It had a tiny, little mouth that would open and close, in rhythmic synch with its little legs.

The poor, little vole was dying, on the cold, hard macadam of a pedestrian walkway off to the side of an immense overpass that spanned a six-lane highway that roared beneath us with traffic racing by at seventy miles per hour. It was all so incredibly noisy and the sky was grey and it was drizzling on a chilly Sunday morning.

I felt sorry for that helpless little vole so small it would have fit easily in the palm of my hand. And I wondered how it ever got to be so very far away from its home in the meadow.

There it was, gasping out its last breaths, upside down in the cold, the grey and the damp, all alone.

I saw myself in that rodent, and I gave thought to putting it out of its misery, but I never did. Instead I walked on hoping to reach the safety of the other side, asking myself a question: “Where is its guardian angel?”

A Poem for Mrs. Bissage

Your soul is a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FISH.

My heart is a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FISH.

Your mind is a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FISH.

My spleen is a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FISH.

Our love is a . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FISH.

Biological Clock

Tales from a Suburban Backyard

In the garden, beneath the comforting shade of a grand old walnut tree, stood a tiny little tree named Shidare. She was a very pretty little Japanese maple, and she was very happy, because it was a beautiful Autumn day and her lacey red leaves fluttered gently in the cool afternoon breeze.

She was hoping that someone would come by, to see how pretty she looked, when she heard an odd sound from above. It started up high in Mr. Walnut and it made a swooshing, rustling noise that got closer and closer and so loud that Shidare became frightened and then her favorite branch was ripped clean away from her trunk and she began to cry.

“Please don’t cry, little Shidare,” said Mr. Walnut. “I am very sorry one of my walnuts fell from such a terrible height and hurt you, but you are young, and you are still very pretty, and now you will grow taller in the Springtime so that everyone in the garden can see you!”

Shidare brightened at the thought, and she set her mind to the serious task of forming callus tissue to close off her wound thus guarding against viral, bacterial and fungal infection. And she hoped that someday soon, Mr. Squirrel would fall out of Mr. Walnut and dash his brains out all over Mr. Rock, who was sitting right there beside her.

THE END

Do It . . . Yourself

Hey, why not? Some people fix their own broken washing machine and some people fetch their own garden mulch.

And then . . . some people . . . do it . . . way hardcore!!!This photograph is by Les Krims. It is entitled "Self Operation Fiction."

Please note that our self-sufficient, surgically aptitudinous hero is using potassium ferricyanide for his topical antiseptic.

That stuff is still the absolute best for achieving retouch bleaching effects in black and white photography, especially when you do it yourself.

SEE WHAT I MEAN?

Ha!

Emotional Bissage

The great Althouse uses labels for her blog posts. One of those labels is called “emotional Althouse.”

Well, it might shock my millions of adoring fans to learn that Bissage has his sensitive side. Yes, yes, I know, I know . . . that’s a terribly uncool thing to openly admit when you are a middle-aged man with enormous, astonishingly effective genitals. But it’s true.

Why am I such a semi-softie? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll tell you some stories about that later on.

But for now, let’s listen to Regina Spektor as she sings “Laughing With.” Hey, there’s no point in my denying it. I get all weepy over this one.

But why is that? Well, I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's because those big, beautiful eyes look like they would never, ever, tell a lie.

Or maybe it’s because, sometimes, you can feel completely safe, and drop your guard, and let it out.

Something like that.

A Fair Question

What's so funny about peace, love and understanding?

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 7

Displaced Althousian Comment # 201

"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep."

-- Saul Bellow

"Incident at Mulch Pile"

Nearby is a municipal mulch pile. Arborists dump their wood chips and you can help yourself. I go there all the time.

So I’m using a pitchfork to load up and in drives this car. Two women get out. They’re both looking around, slightly puzzled, as though they've never been there before. They seem friendly and my surmise is they are committed lesbians. They approach and they ask, “Can you give us some advice?”

I put down the pitchfork and I say to them (and this is 100% true): “There’s not much to it. Just make it easy on yourself. Once you’ve put it in as far as it can go, there’s really no point in pushing any further.”

They give each other a mischievous smile.

I turn beet red! Heck, what I said was completely innocent!

Anyway, they must have thought that my being shy was kind of cute because we end up having sexual intercourse. I give them multiple orgasms and they tell me I have a nice organ.

Afterwards, they say to me, “You have had relations with us so you are now an honorary homosexual.”

And I say to them, “I’m okay with that.”

THE END

Your Faithful Internet Companion Purges His Car

I still try to listen to talk radio when I'm driving but it is nearly always infuriatingly pointless. I have not yet broken my hand with a punch to the dashboard. Where I come from, that’s called winning.

I’ve been re-listening to some of my music discs. I get them from the bookcase in the bedroom where we also keep the cats’ litter boxes. It is in this way that each individual CD jewel case is also a single component of an enormous and highly ineffective air filtration system.

There were too many discs in the car, and I am about to put them back in the cat room, now that their jewel cases have been scraped clean of their powdery grey, tenaciously clinging, floral-scented coating. As you cat owners already know, that coating is a toxic blend of lung-destroying, clumping, clay laced with pulverized fecal matter and aerosolized urine. MMMM, MMMM, GOOD!!!

Anyway, the discs to be returned are, as follows:

(1) Herbie Hancock, “Mwandishi, The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings”;
(2) Radiohead, “In Rainbows”;
(3) Green Day, “21st Century Breakdown”;
(4) The Beatles, “Let it Be”;
(5) The Beatles, “Help!”;
(6) Ray Charles, “The Very Best of Ray Charles”; and finally
(7) Elliott Smith, “Figure 8”.

There you have it!

(Thought you'd want to know.)

What a Friend We Have in Cheeses!!!

Many of the songs by Alan Price in the movie “O Lucky Man” flip back on themselves – cheerfully sad or sadly cheerful. This is exactly in keeping with the movie's vibe, and the way it ends, in particular.

The director is auditioning Travis (Malcolm McDowell) for the preceding film in the trilogy. The director commands him to smile but he’s in no mood because he’s been jerked around for the last 90 cinematic minutes like Job's marionette. The director then whacks him across the head and he slowly but surely smiles the most meta-ironic smile ever in the whole, entire history of the motion pictures of the pictures of motion, teh EVARRRRRR!!1!!!1!!!!

Anyway, here’s a song from "O Lucky Man" that’s been on heavy rotation in my skull for about 30 years now.For the first ten years of that I didn't know the song is based on a timeless Christian hymm. That's mostly because I have never, ever, been anything other than a no-good, no-account, scum-sucking, flea-infested, cotton-picking, dirty, rotten, rat-bastard heathen.

No matter. The song makes me feel slightly better on the inside. I confess I don't know why. Maybe it has something to do with the inherent, spiritual goodness of hymms. Maybe it has something to do with how it feels immediately after you’ve been whacked across the head, and you find yourself standing in the exact same spot you were standing the instant before.

Love must always change to sorrow
and everyone must play the game.
It's here today and gone tomorrow
but the world goes on the same.

So go ahead and smile.

For silly goose Bissage.

Please?

Le Texte D'Attente Français

This is a wonderfully ambiguous and complex photograph by Jean Gaumy. It is untitled, so far as I know. It has that certain je ne sais quoi. No?

I ask you, is it a symbolic representation of me and Mrs. Bissage, only le vieux and le swarthy?

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

* strokes chin *

I post it, here, in large part, merely because I feel like I need to post something. You see, my conscience has been bothering me.

Anyway, please don't hold me to the title of this blog post. I got it from babelfish or something or other. You see, except for the words "bon-bon," "poodle-bush," and "Audrey-Hepburn," I don't speak a single, stinking word of French.

No! Wait! Stop! Hold on there, Baba Looey! Maybe I do know something more about France. After all, I really liked "The 400 Blows," "A Man and a Woman," and I would really, really, really like to experience wild, uninhibited, sweaty carnal relations with Audrey Tautou and Eva Green (together, thankyouverymuch).

Oh yeah, and then there is this: My first movie memory is "Grand Prix" (1966). Also, I think I might have once buttered up Maria Schneider -- under the influence of unnatural fungus, mind you.

Oh, and there is one more thing I know about France. More than a few of my ex-girlfriends have said that it tickles, so there's that.

Patrick Swayze has Died

We welcomed him into our homes as an honored guest. And then off we would go, all together, hop scotching around the world for headlines. Through good times and bad, he took a licking and kept on ticking.He made us laugh and he made us cry. He porked first-rate tail and he kicked dirt-ball ass. He suffered for us all, just like Jesus, when he actually touched Demi Moore, Queen of the Cooties.

But now, he is a ghost, dirty dancing in that great big road house in the sky. People Magazine's sexiest man alive is dead.

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 6

Lost in Translation?

In my dream, I find myself in a large sporting goods store. It is connected, at its far end, to a shopping mall but I’m well past that now. Instead, I am deep within the store about to wander among the many rows of white shelving.

I notice the hanging merchandise displayed for sale. Packages of sinkers, bobbers, snelled hooks. Fishing lures like spinners, plugs, jigs, flies and spoons.

I look up and I realize that the store now has a ceiling forty feet tall. The windows are so immense that it seems as if the walls are made completely of glass.

I can see that the day is overcast and cloudy, except that there is a giant plecostomus catfish on the outside of the glass. It is ten or fifteen feet long and it is hovering in the air with dragonfly wings that beat so fast I can barely see them. It is eating the green algae that covers the outside of the windows. Wherever the fish clears away the algae, beautiful, brilliant blue sky shines through.

This seems wondrous to me, and it makes me happy, like a child. But I am immediately overcome by an inexplicable feeling of dread as I notice that a terrible dark storm is approaching from the far off horizon.

A salesman asks if he can help me but I distrust him. I dash away fearing that the shelves will move by themselves to form a labyrinth that would block my way.

The man disappears and I am standing before a door. It opens by itself, and I take a step outside, and now I am standing on green grass. There is a far-off river valley between high mountains.

The sky darkens and I feel a tremendous sense of loss and emptiness.

The grand, spreading oak tree before me has perfect symmetry and a beautiful woman is standing at its base. She wears a white gown and she radiates a shimmering white light. She has dragonfly wings and I realize in my dream that she must be the same entity that I saw earlier as the plecostomus catfish -- an angel of hope and redemption.

And then I wake up. And I try to figure out, quietly to myself, if the vision of the woman I just saw was actually the character in the movie “Lost in Translation” played by the actress Scarlett Johansson.

You see, it was just the night before that I saw that movie, for the third time.

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 5

Jazz Impressions of the Blog Wars # 31

You know what? There are these repugnant men in the world. I’ve met some of them during the course of my young life.

They watch lots of pr*nography on the internet. And at some weird, deep down, reptilian level of their brain, they get a sensation that feels like the memory that they’ve actually – in real life -- smacked a woman on her ass who is three times better-looking than any other woman who would so much as give them the time of day. And they've actually seen the red welt on her ass so that proves it’s all true.

And then there are these people who like to fight with strangers over politics on the internet. Lots of insults. It seems to be very important to them that they win. How they figure out they’ve actually won is a complete mystery to me.

But I do know this: Deep down inside, to them, anyway, it must feel like they’ve used their intelligence -- but not their body -- to wound or maybe even kill another person.

And, at least for a little while, anyway, they can enjoy the memory that their life is actually worth living.

Must be nice.

Bissage is Back to Being Disgusted

It's one of my things. I always do my level best to be amused, but this morning I am back to being disgusted. Why? Because today's Philadelphia Inquirer published an opinion piece by Trudy Rubin.

Its message? Do not oppose President Obama’s domestic agenda or else America's enemies will attack.

I am not making this up.

Nor am I about to link to such a piece of revoltingly unprincipled, patently partisan crap. It’s entitled “Worldview: Taliban’s Unwitting Assistants” and you can Google it for yourself.

But I recommend you don't.

Your time would be better spent helping me find my red shoes.

(Hey! I'm back to being amused. Cool!)

Funky Mogambo Across the Globe # 17

This is by B. Kliban and it's from his cartoon anthology entitled "The Biggest Tongue in Tunisia."

I kind of dig the chick, but then, I had a wicked crush on Tina Cole back when I was young.

Truth be told, I was insanely jealous of Robbie Douglas. He must have been huge.

How Kliban would come to know all this, I can't imagine.

Morning's Meditation

Fiestaware-coffee-cat-tablecloth, watching sweet icing; on
Georgian mahogany, newspaper chair.

Unaccustomed coffee breath.

(Hiatal hernia. Straining pot.)

Unaccountable powder-room sweating.

Toilet-paper-newsprint, grey smudge appealing, all clean now.

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 4

The White Wedding's Burden

This photograph is entitled "Balancing Unusual Objects on the Back of a Nude, No. 1." It is by Les Krims.

Morning Dream in Four Parts, with Dénouement

PART ONE: It is the present. It is late afternoon and I am walking on a downtown sidewalk. A sizable crowd of young urban professionals has spilled out from a trendy bistro sort of place. I get caught up in the crowd and I feel foreign, disquieted, and submerged but I do not panic. In fact, in my dream I feel cooly analytic about the situation although I sincerely want to escape.

PART TWO: Suddenly, I am inside my ex-girlfriend’s studio apartment, who is by now fifty years old. She is not at home and I am surprised to discover that she has a roomate who is in her early twenties and who is in the kitchenette preparing dinner. I watch the roommate as I lie on a nearby king-size bed which has no headboard or footboard. In my hands I hold one of those women’s fashion magazines.

I am underneath the bed covers – a pink and yellow floral comforter – completely naked. I feel uncharacteristically comfortable and I am hoping that the roommate will notice and join me. She is very appealing and she comes over very matter-of-factly and we make love under the covers. It is very brief, and she is sincerely pleased about it all, so I fully realize that I am in a dream.

PART THREE: My ex-girlfriend comes home with her husband and her grade-school-aged son. The roommate is serving dinner. I am still in bed and I feel like it is inappropriate for me to be there, in plain view, while they are eating, although only my ex-girlfriend seems to notice or care. Her jealousy makes me uncomfortable and I want to leave.

PART FOUR: The roommate gets up from the table, and comes over, and tells me I am welcome to use the shower. I demur saying it’s okay, I’ll just put on my clothes and sneak out. She insists it would be all right for me to use the bathroom and she returns to the others.

I am completely naked as I walk past them on my way to the bathroom. It strikes me as odd that I feel no sense of self-consciousness; only a slight sense of pride that the roommate finds me desirable in her detached, dispassionate kind of way. When I get to the doorway of the bathroom, I realize it belongs to my ex-girlfriend and not to the roommate.

It is wrong of me to use my ex-girlfriend’s bathroom and suddenly I am in the roommate’s bathroom, which is not inside the apartment. Rather, it is outside in the back yard; just a shower head and knobs sticking out of the side of the building and I reason that I must have gotten there by walking through the bifold closet doors that form the back entryway to the apartment.

I observe that any of the neighbors can easily see me, except that right beside me is a mature deciduous shrub in which a garden spider has built an enormous spider web. I admire its beauty and at the same time I am grossed out that I might rub up against it with my wet, naked body. I am standing on a concrete stepping stone to keep my feet off the muddy lawn.

DẾNOUEMENT: Then I wake up. I get out of bed and go to the bathroom. I perform a routine systems check and I am glad to find I did not ejaculate in my pajamas. I reflect upon the whole situation, while my prostate gently weeps. Mrs. Bissage stirs in bed but she does not awaken.

THE END

Feel the Love # 31

Now then, what's with all this downer hub-bub about a Presidential speech to little schoolchildren?

I ask you -- sincerely, deeply, horribly -- who among us can honestly say that words of encouragement from an authority figure have not made all the difference?Why did I post this? Because I love, dammit, because I L-O-V-E.

And speaking of words of encouragement, click on this.It ain't Buddy Holly but it ain't half bad. Go ahead. Listen to it through the crappy little dashboard speaker connected to the AM car radio installed in your skull.

You know, the one with the push buttons and the big plastic knobs.

Go ahead.

You know you want to.

President Obama Packs a Punch

Here at Suddenly Bissage!!!, we have recently learned that President Obama will not deliver his address to the nations' schoolchildren as planned. No, he has sized up the defense and will call an audible at the line of scrimmage.

We reproduce his newly revised speech, here, in its entirety:

“Stay in school and use your brain. Be a doctor, be a lawyer, carry a leather briefcase. Forget about sports as a profession. Sports make you grunt and smell. Be a thinker, not a stinker.”

If only.

If only.

"Ghost Dog" has Ninny Buttons

Last night, Mrs. Bissage and I watched the movie “Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai.” Forest Whitaker is amazing, as usual, and I like any movie with a narrator, and I’m a real sucker for that serene “ancient Chinese secret” life-lesson stuff, so I recommend it.

Give it a “B.” It has a mellow, rhymic, mood which is interestingly incongruous for a movie where people get shot left and right.

I’m not at all sure where it took place, but the movie does an excellent job of making the urban world look like a giant poop-hole. The water in “Titanic” was a character, all by itself, and so too is the general grubbiness in “Ghost Dog.” I don’t like cities to begin with and the movie’s portrayal is pretty much the way I see them; trash and decay and grime everywhere. Depressing.

Anyway, the movie’s biggest fault, IMHO, is its hedging sense of humor. The mobsters are too cartoonish to be scary and the director shoves some animated cartoons in there just so we all get to feel like we're in on the joke.

Ha ha. Whatever.

If they spent more time and money on it they’d have ended up with a Quentin Tarantino movie, without the jitters. As I might have said before, “Ghost Dog” is nearly hypnotic. No jagged edges, at all.

It's worth a rent so long as you’re into dime-store code-of-the-warrior stuff (WORF!), and gangster movies like “Goodfellas,” and you’re looking for some light entertainment.

There is no greatness in it, but it wasn’t boring.

P.S. (1) I should add that I highly recommend “Rashōmon” and “The Seven Samurai,” in that order.

(2) If you pay close attention to the elements in “Ghost Dog,” it’s pretty easy to see how it never comes together so as to exceed itself, which threatens to betray the whole cinematic idiom. Maybe I’ll explain what I mean by that blather, some day later. Ha!

(3) I don’t care for rap music. It’s simply not my cup of tea. But the rap music in “Ghost Dog” was appropriately moody and it didn’t get in the way too much. I kept listening for the word "ho" but to no avail.

(4) Done.

Excellence in Shading # 71

Horrifically cute drawings don't get any better than this one.It's by Wallace Tripp and it's called "Atilla the Bun." Get it? Ha!

Please make sure you pay full respect to the severed bunny head.

Gross!

It's from the collection entitled "Wallace Tripp's Wurst Seller."

A Public Service Announcement

(1) THIS IS MY BRAIN.

(2) THIS IS MY BRAIN ON BLOG.

(3) ANY QUESTIONS?

Sometimes Comments Repeat on Me

I kind of like this comment I posted over at Althouse, which is very much my favorite blog.

Limericks for Our Times # 31

There once was a proud garden toad
Who lived in a mossy abode.
It went to foreclosure.
He died from exposure.
Because of the money he owed.

"A Historical Drawing"

That is the title given to this cartoon by the late, great B. Kliban.I believe him.

I was too young back then. And, when I was in my late teens (in the late 70s) there were plenty of hairy, geeky guys who were ten or so years older than me way too eager to do the big-brother routine and say pointless things like "Too bad you missed the 60s, man. If you couldn't get laid in the 60s, man, you couldn't get laid, man."

Patently untrue, of course. One has to consider the source, after all.

Please study that B. Kliban drawing carefully. It's accuracy is unassailable. For example, please note the complete absence of anyone wearing a purple toupee.

That would not come until later.

Peace, man.

What is the Plural of Why?

Here are a few random questions about blogging:

(1) Why have I never made it a feature of this blog to post photographs of my boomers? How about a place setting with a well-formed boomer on a dinner plate with string beans, roasted onions and mashed potatoes? There chould be a nice little garnish off to the side. Chianti.

How about a steaming stinky in a hot dog bun with mustard and relish? Meatloaf made out of my crap. Feces links done German delicatessen style. There could even be the occasional special guest dump, just like they have on TV sitcoms.

(2) Why have I never made it a feature of this blog to post photographs of scenes from famous movies using my penis? I could dress it up like Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara. Why stop there? The Ten Commandments. Ben-Hur. Planet of the Apes. Get a whole Charlton Heston homage going. In fact, I think that’s what I’d prefer. Make it manly. Present my wiggle-stick as classically virile. I never much liked “Gone With the Wind,” anyway.

(3) Why have I never made it a feature of this blog to post videos of me cutting and mutilating myself to theme music based on current events in the news? I could use loppers to cut off the tip of my finger to “Who Let the Dogs Out” and dedicate it to Michael Vick. I could split my tongue with a straight razor to “I’m Bad” for Michael Jackson. I could pierce my own nipples to any song by the Gin Blossoms for Ted Kennedy.

So, you see, these are very, very serious questions, and they deserve very, very serious answers, very, very much like all those Questions of My Childhood.

Well, honestly, how good an answer does anyone ever really need to such questions? Truth be told, I've had a ready answer for years.

Do you want to know what it is? Okay, I'll tell you.

We're all taking the bus and we all get off at different stops.

Works for me, anyway.

A Sincere Movie Recommendation

Here is a still from the movie "The Virgin Spring." I chose this image because I think it best summarizes the whole film, which is quite serious.It shows the patriarch of a small wilderness settlement preparing himself to execute a judgment of sentence. What we see is beautiful in its brooding clarity, even as a man wrestles with nature to the ugly death.

Sorry I can't say more, but I'm completely unqualified to speak with authority about the film. There's lots of stuff on the internet if you're interested.

I posted this hoping that someone might become curious and see "The Virgin Spring" who might not see it otherwise.

Posting this is something like a good deed, and perhaps, a kind of atonement.

Please see the movie if you want to know what I mean by that.

Tumble, Bumble, Wire and Gumble

In my dream I was Ensign Wesley Crusher, except I was really me and I had a really nice set of perky young breasts. This pleased me immensely but it was urgent that I locate a toothbrush for the cat. This is when I noticed that the penguin had ceased to function.

All of a sudden, my third-grade teacher warned me that the chalkboard erasers had become slippery and I began running in slow-motion. Someone who looked like Wally Cox (but who was really Julie Andrews) appeared as though he wanted to say something. This struck me as odd since I wasn’t looking at him but I could see him anyway.

A grand piano appeared and its keys became teeth which smiled a very beautiful smile and then I woke up.

True Bedroom Confessions #6

What follows is a real quote from a real person. I was there to hear it. The truth of this is 100% guaranteed:

And then there was this guy who had a really big one. He looked just like a Hasid, you know, a Jew with a beard and all. I can always remember how big it was because I could just barely get my hand around it.

And he was really hairy, too. I didn’t like that but I have to admit it was a real turn-on to have sex with a guy with a really big one. I guess that makes me a whore but if I’m a whore then I guess I’m a whore. After a while I had to end our relationship because all he ever wanted to do was fuck my tits and come on me.

I remember those exact words from more than 20 years ago. They are engrafted onto my brain. And to make matters worse, those words were merely a small part of a rambling 2:30 am monologue that was delivered by a woman I knew well, but who I slept with only that one time. Doing so was against my better judgment. After all, I broke the first rule of hooking up which is "you don't sleep with crazy."

So in a way I got what I deserved. But still, I am hard-pressed to believe that any other man would have just laid there in his own bed listening to her run at the mouth about previous lovers. That ain't pillow talk.

I was then, and still am, way too polite. I mean, it's not like I was collecting little anecdotes so I could use them later in a blog or anything.

Morgengehirn

I don't know any German so don't hold me to that.

You're most digestible my friend, delicious, too, from end to end.

What the hell am I talking about?

AM I INSANE!?!?!

Beats me. But this morning's neural pathway had to crap out, somewhere, and this is where it happened, as follows:
Not a bad place, actually.

Gotta go, now.

It's time for mein frühstück.

Ja, ja, ja, ja!

Three Smells

Three smells just came to visit me from the past. They are gone now but they were here, I promise you.

The first was the smell of the modeling clay they gave us in kindergarden. The second was the puppy my mother brought home from the SPCA when I was ten. The third was this one particular girl I met at a high school soccer match.

Each one of these smells -- along with its time and place -- exists now only as a memory in my mind. The instant I die they will be gone forever.

In all candor, I should note that I am still in a fog from a bad night's sleep, that my allergy to ragweed is in full swing, and that I've got one hell of a sinus headache going on here.

That was three.

We Were There

Last night, Mrs. Bissage and I watched “My Dinner with Andre.” It was our second time. Oddly enough, though, I don’t think I picked up much that I hadn't before. This came as something of a shock because I like to consider myself at least marginally educable. Oh well. Ha!

We intend to see it again, although Mrs. Bissage wants to put some distance in between now and then. When I see it for the third time, I know I will become fixated on the restaurant employees. This obsession embarrasses me but I can’t help it. Why do they appear when they do? What do their reactions foretell? Why was the waiter blinking in Morse code? What is the secret message? This is important. I need to figure it out. And I had better get something more for my effort than just a crummy “Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine®.”

But seriously, in this movie there is no sex. No violence. No eye candy. No action, really, except what’s in your imagination. But there are ideas. Oh, how there are ideas! And there is a kind of benevolent godliness to it. And there is a way to live your life.

This is not one of those ephemeral movies that might just as well have been last Wednesday’s breakfast. This is a movie to love and embrace and keep close forever. I will see it again and again and again and again.

My deepest gratitude goes out to Althouse, who recommends this movie to all her blog fans. Were it not for her, neither Mrs. Bissage nor I would have been sitting at that restaurant table with Andre and Wally. And we would have been poorer for the loss.

Because sometimes it’s best just to sit there and listen.

And to let the other guy pick up the check.

I'm Spacey Today, How Odd(yssey)

I’m afraid my mind is going . . . I can feel it . . . My mind is going . . . There is no question about it . . . I can feel it.Many years ago, I learned to sing a song . . . If you'd like to hear it, I can sing it for you . . . It’s about feeling all hollowed-out down the Jersey Shore . . . It’s called “4th of July, Asbury Park.”

Charles Krauthammer Broke My Heart

Mrs. Bissage and I watched Fox News while eating dinner. The panel talked about Michael Vick being hired by the Philadelphia Eagles.

What Charles Krauthammer said was incoherent. He said justice requires that Mr. Vick (the dog torturer, dog killer and dog fight impresario) be given a second chance since he has “paid his debt to society,” but that Mr. Krauthammer would not, himself, ever hire so horrid a person.
Why would the normally (seemingly) principled Krauthammer take such a position?

Fox broadcasts NFL football, that's why. We wouldn’t want to piss off advertisers now would we? Krauthammer’s decision was motivated the same as the Eagles'. It wasn’t personal. It was strictly business.

The damaged-goods Michael Vick was a bargain.

What do they pay Charles Krauthammer?

Fuck the kids.

Garden Puppy

Okay, I lied. She is not really a puppy. She is a full-grown dog seven years old.And there is little to be gained from false modesty, so I might just as well come out and say it. She is totally beautiful.

She is beautiful, beyond belief.

Inside and out, she is the most beautiful thing in the entire Universe.

And when she dies, I will cry for years.

I will cry just like a little baby.

ObamaCare in My Underwear

When it comes to physicians, I'm just about the most hero-worshipping lawyer you'll ever find. But let's not kid ourselves. They work for money the same as everybody else.Here, the great R. Taylor makes this unpleasant point in a charmingly pleasant way.

But in all candor, this cartoon predates 1960 and it seems outdated.

House calls are a thing of the past.

And who says "pshaw" anymore?

Totally Massive FAIL!!1!!!!!!!!1!!!!!

I'm posting this entirely crappy photo so as not to leave hanging those fellow Althousians who might have wanted to see the two kidney stones I hung onto. (There were others, BTW.) (They were delicious.)Lousy though this photo be, still it is the best I can do. You can click it for some magnification. No matter. It will remain chock full of sucktitudenousness, which is why I hate me, even more than I hate myself, which right now is a lot.

So look fast, people. And lick your monitor screen, should you feel the urge, while you may. My urine-cured cuties won't be up here for long.

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 3

This one deserves a title."Diane Chambers Bore My Love Child"

Canon PowerShot Readymade # 2

IM IN UR CAMRAMAKIN MAI MISCHEEF

(lol)

So Much for My Ambition

Recently inspired by the great Althouse, I resolved to do more with this blog. And I found myself wanting to see if I could post a photograph I took all by my little old self.

Fine, so far, but where to begin? Well, I saw this post and I thought it might be funny to take a photo of the kidney stones I've been keeping in a Tupperware container in my desk drawer.

So I got out my camera and I pushed the button for the macro function.

And it broke.See what I mean?

Bissage . . . the Charlie Brown of the internet.

[*sigh*]

Much has Been Said Already

And yet sometimes it is said so much better.

This is why we soldier on.

The late, great B. Kliban had much to say.

'Twas ever thus.

Mrs. Bissage Keeps a Clean House

Here we find Mrs. Bissage in the throes of appreciation; happy as a bearded clam she has me to call her very own.
And, really, who can blame her?

This cartoon, by the great Jean-Jacques Sempé, is as insightful (and inciteful) as it is delightful.

He has a wikipedia entry. LINK.

P.S. Inciteful is not yet a real word. Use it at your peril!

Walter Cronkite has Died

There will always be a loving spot in my heart for Walter Cronkite. I was only a little kid at the time, but I’ll never forget lying on my belly in my pajamas in front of the TV set enthralled by his deep and sonorous voice. He was like the voice of God.

And I’ll never forget how impressed I was hearing him narrate the John Wanamaker Christmas Light Show or those wonderful highlight reels produced by NFL Films.

Rest in Peace, Uncle Walter.

Leave No Man Behind

This morning I was reminded of some solid life-advice I was given many years ago. You see, I used to work as a college intern at a big corporation. I was very wet behind the ears, as they say, and I pretty much stank at everything they ever assigned me.

On my last day, this older guy took me aside. He used to be an Army Ranger, and he could be crude at times, but he had a big heart and he sort of watched out for me, if you know what I mean. He said, “Bissage, no matter how bad things might get for you out there in the real world, always make sure to keep your O-ring squeaky clean.”

What he said made perfect sense to me (maybe you had to be there) and I’ve always done my level best to do precisely that. Which is why, this morning, I had a problem.

You see, I was sitting on the hopper and I was doing the paper work. There was more of the enemy than usual and there were some unanticipated pockets of resistance. I had to send in reinforcements. Several flushes and many fistfuls of music roll later, I opened up wide for the final mopping up operation when it happened; my bear trap snapped shut and it clamped down on a wad of toilet paper. After the follow-through, not all of it made it into the water.

Well, I couldn’t just leave it stuck in there! I went into that hairy jungle thicket with thumb and forefinger and extracted that asset. And what a success it was! Visual inspection revealed that there was not even so much as a speck of brown, although my fingers smelled slightly like poop, afterwards.

And I sat there reflecting upon those words of wisdom from so many years ago.

Fucking A.

One of Those Bug People

It is three weeks ago and I am sitting in the doctor’s waiting room. In walks this sales rep and she’s totally great-looking. She is thirty-two years old, slender, with a nice rack and long brunette hair. Short skirt and high heels. She looks like Linda Fiorentino in her prime.

She says to the receptionist, “I’m here to stock your Viagra®.”

(I am not making this up.)

The receptionist tells her to wait a few minutes so she sits down a few chairs away from me. All of a sudden, the sales rep freaks out. She leaps up and she dashes across the room and she starts stomping on a bug.

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! She is a woman possessed.

Finally convinced that it is completely dead, she returns to her seat without throwing whatever it was into the waste basket, which is a mere four feet away.

So I get up to throw it in the trash. After all, I’m not going to just leave it there on my doctor’s waiting room carpet. Afterwards, I return to my seat and I feel the urge to address the situation.

“It was a centipede. It was searching for water.”

The sales rep senses danger. She gives me a long hard look. She says, “You’re not one of those BUG PEOPLE, are you?" It wasn't exactly a question.

I say, “If you are asking me whether I’m a giant cockroach from outer space like in ‘Men in Black’ then the answer is no.”

She gives me a look of complete and total lack of comprehension. No matter. She’s still totally gorgeous.

At that very, exact instant, the receptionist tells the sales rep that she can go back to stock the shelves.

So what do I do? I just sit there and wait for my turn to see the doctor. Yes, that’s what I do. And at the same time, I also spend the next ten minutes fantasizing about having an extremely large and effective sex organ and presenting it to that sales rep doggie style, treating her to a veritable cavalcade of multiple orgasms, right there on the waiting room floor.

And I am wearing a giant centipede costume.

He would have wanted it that way.

This is Only a Test

Why can't I cut and paste from MSWord?

Let's try it yet again: What a tangled web we weave.

Hey, it worked!

I wonder why . . .

Aha!

You have to be in "Edit Html."

If you are in "Compose" mode then you can't cut and paste from MSWord.

Hey, I actually figured something out.

ANOTHER TRIUMPH!!!!1!!!!!!!!

Adrienne Barbeau

We were lying side by side in my dream, on a grassy hill in the sunshine, with many others nearby when all of a sudden her skirt hiked up all by itself and I touched her fanny ever so gently and gazed admiringly.

But another man might notice so I nuzzled at the nape of her neck confessing with the quietest whisper my deepest secret saying “I had a crush on you in high school” and she smiled broadly with love in her eyes and said “I know.”

Bissage Attempts a Second Poem

If I were God, no one could hurt me.

And I would give everyone everything they ever wanted.

Because I want to see them happy.

And not because I need to be loved.

Bissage Attempts a Poem

Two lesbians in their prime power-walking the suburban cul-de-sac
sleek as seals

Hip against hip, arms interlocked.

Striding black leopard lycra
Fast and strong, past every suburban lawn.
Fast and strong, united as one, posture perfect, fast and strong.

Garage window lawyer peeking-spying-pudgy-graying

Proud.

They stop to admire his peonies.

A Sad Remembrance

Years ago I was 24 years old. I was riding this commuter train and I saw this guy I recognized. I saw him from pretty far away as the car was pretty empty.

He was maybe 5 years older than me and he was sitting there by himself and he looked really sad. He was just sort of staring into empty space.

I knew him, sort of, because he tended bar at this English-style pub in Philadelphia I used to go to every now and then. About two weeks earlier he helped me out of a jam. You see, I’d had at least a couple of pints and there was this middle-aged husband and wife couple sitting at a table on the way to the rest room. They seemed friendly and they struck up a conversation with me and I told them I was all broken up over a girlfriend who just dumped me.

And then the weirdest thing happened. Slowly but surely, they started needling me about how much I was a loser . . . like they were trying to convince me I was a worthless piece of shit.

They were pretty good at it, too. I remember one of the things the man said: “Maybe she realized she made a mistake in the first place.”

They were working like a tag team and it soon seemed to me like they’d picked me to be the victim in some sort of a cruel psychological game they played for their own amusement. So I went back to the bar. They left me alone at first but then they started up again. They tried to coax me back to their table but I said no.

And then they got really nasty. Especially the woman. She ended up yelling insults at me from across the room!

I wish it weren’t true but I let it get under my skin . . . big time.

Anyway, they laid off after a bit. This guy was tending bar and he could see I was sad and he talked to me. His name was Tom and he said the married couple were friends of the owner so he couldn’t bounce them but they were freaks who were into mind games. At that point, I was about as depressed as I could get and I said, “Some of the stuff they said is true. Maybe I am a loser.”

And he was very, very nice to me and he said that’s all bullshit and that everybody gets broken up over a girl, every now and then, so I should never forget that. He was sort of like a big brother when I needed one, and I really appreciated his kindness, and I figured I’d had too much to drink so I left after a few minutes.

Well, that was the guy I saw on the train about two weeks later. I probably wouldn’t have recognized him, out of place like that, except he was wearing a “Guinness” sweater. It was tan with the logo on the front in black. And as I said before, he looked really sad. And I thought to myself, “You know, I should go over there and see if maybe he wants a little cheering up because it would be the right thing to do.”

But I never did. I made all the typical excuses to myself like he probably wants to be alone and maybe it’s not really him and maybe he gets off at the next stop or he probably won’t remember me or he’ll think I’m a weirdo . . . you know, all that stuff that gets in the way all the time.

So I just sat there trying to hide behind a newspaper like a coward and eventually it was my stop so I got off.

And now it's two weeks later. I’m at that same pub and one of the bartenders is washing beer mugs behind the bar and I say to him, “Hey, is Tom working tonight?”

He never looks up.

“No. Tom’s dead. He killed himself.”

He keeps washing beer mugs and I sit there in stunned silence. He finishes up and goes back to serving drinks. I get up off my bar stool and leave.

That’s a true story.

It Happened One Summer

I just read my post entitled “My Balls Itch.”

That reminded me of the time I flew coach from Newark (or New York) to Prague and I ended up with a case of crotch rot fit for a king.

Anyway, somewhere near the Charles Bridge I pantomimed my symptoms to a Chinese pharmacist who sold me a little tube of stuff to rub on my hairy, hanging nutsack.

It had one of those funny Ikea furniture names like Bosporp or Jikki or something like that. I think it came from Hungary.

That stuff worked pretty well, actually.

I was grateful.

And to this very day, I think good thoughts about the Czech Republic and China and Hungary every time I think about my itchless scrotum.

The Way It Is

I’m feeling kind of gassy right now and there are bits of hickory-smoked almonds stuck in my teeth and I don’t feel like getting up because I just sat down and I just farted but I'm still feeling uncomfortably gassy so it all seems kind of unfair.

Thought you’d want to know.

My Balls Itch

No kidding.

They really do and my dinger has gotten all tangled up in my underpants and it's squished out of place and the whole region down there is kind of uncomfortable.

I've been working at my desk, poring over papers, sitting in this chair, leaning forward, for far too long.

Which reminds me. My crotch is sweaty, too.

It's time for me to stand up and get a few things straightened out.

The fresh air should do me good.

Dry things out a bit.

Wish me luck.

"We Meet Cedric, Who Is A Mud Thrower"

"We Meet Cedric, Who is a Mud Thrower"

That’s a quote from this website about an episode of “Dirty Jobs” on TV.

I watch that show whenever I get the chance. It’s a real treat.

Well, during that episode, Cedric said something so profound I thought someone should put it on the internet in case someone might read it and learn something I’m still trying to get through my thick head after 46 unhappy years on this planet.

You see, he is a “mud thrower.” He takes a big glob of thick mud (13 pounds worth) and he lifts it up and he slaps it down into a brick form and off it goes to the kiln or something.

One after another.

All day long.

Grab . . . Lift . . . Slap.

Grab . . . Lift . . . Slap.

Grab . . . Lift . . . Slap.

He gets paid by the brick.

And you know what?

He has a much better attitude toward his job than I have toward mine.

He seems like a very pleasant fellow and this is what he had to say: “You get a rhythm going, it’s not so bad.”

Let me type that out one more time.

“YOU GET A RHYTHM GOING, IT’S NOT SO BAD.”

And there you have it, folks.

Words of wisdom.

It Happened Just a Minute Ago

I was about to squat on the pot when I noticed there might not be enough music roll to finish the paper work. So I got a new roll before sitting down rather than take my chances, and in any event, even if the roll lasted for the whole wiping session, I would be morally bound to get a new roll for whoever came after me, so I might as well do it sooner rather than later.

Might I die on the hopper before getting to the wiping phase?

That was a risk that could not be reasonably avoided.

I am a lawyer.

Silly Rhymes (#51)

In days of old
when knights were bold
and rubbers weren't invented,
the men put socks
around their cocks
and babies were prevented.

I am not to blame for that one.

I am simply repeating it.

Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz

It has been far too long since I plopped something down here yet still I’ve got nothing to say but it’s okay.

Good morning!

Good morning!

Good morning!

Mot Goes Bye-byes.

I suspect I'm getting to be a kook as I get older. Why? Because I've been finding meaning in silly coincidences.

Case in point: There's only one picture of Mot on the entire internet and I've been using it as my avatar when I comment at Althouse. A week or so back I got a funny feeling and I printed it out because I thought it might disappear forever. And then a day or two later it actually did, in fact, disappear from the internet.

So . . . yeah, I wondered out loud whether there was some kind of weird force that warned me to take action.

Ha!

Don't worry. I'm just messing with you.

It's true about the coincidence but I don't really believe unseen benevolent forces are speaking to me and telling me what to do. Hearing voices is how the guys with the giant butterfly net and the straitjacket know you're crazy. So I'm sure it was just a weird feeling. I didn't actually hear any disembodied voices.

Or maybe I did.

Maybe a voice, right now, is telling me to tell you I'm not hearing a voice.

It could happen.

But maybe that's just a feeling.

Go To Althouse

This blog was set up so I could comment at Althouse.

You should go there.

Honks Like Clarinet

Honks Like Clarinet. That would be her name if Patti Smith were Lakota Sioux or some kind of Indian where they earn themselves a name like Stands With Fist or Dances With Wolves or some such. Any of those would be much better than Types On Keyboard.

Why Patti Smith and why this song? No good reason, really. Just total capriciousness on my part, except someone once told me when I was in high school in the late 70s that she was from Pittman, NJ. I know where that is and the idea of Patti Smith growing up in Pittman is funny all by itself, even if it's not true. And this band does as much with that Am-G-F thing in a rock song as I can imagine possible.

Watch the video. That's a sensitive, arty, misfit chick absolutely brimming with tough grrrl attitude working herself into an ecstatic frenzy at the thought of buying me stuff.

What? She's not thinking about me while she's touching herself?

Right. And I suppose she isn't totally cool, either.

You're just jealous.

Do You Know This Mood?

"Now it's over I'm dead and I haven't done anything that I want or I'm still alive and there's nothing I want to do."

Ask not for whom the egg salads

Were it not for Althouse, and this post, I might never have learned that Mrs. Bissage ABSOLUTELY REFUSES to eat hardboiled eggs.

After 14 years of marriage, I had no idea.

Make that: After 14 years of homemade egg salad sandwiches.

No, make that: After 14 years of utter cluelessness.

Any way you slice it, you've got to love Mrs. Bissage!

Untitled

"With Major Lawrence, mercy is a passion. With me, it is merely good manners. You may judge which motive is the more reliable."

For the Horses.

What the hay! Here's another (Christopher Hitching) post.