Mort Castle

In a previous STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED entitled LANGUAGE–BY LINGOIST Mort Castle, I established my multifluidity in Spanish, Russian, French, Arabic, German, and Classical Gibberish. In our global, even globular village, it is somewhat essential to be able to express yourself in a number of languages.. The barriers come down between peoples when you can say, “I am not CIA so please don’t employ that red hot nozzle thing in the manner your gestures indicate you plan to, my good friend.”

Today, then, I wish to provide an introduction to a fortunately obscure language that nonetheless is spoken by well over several hundred people in countries throughout the world.

Let’s focus on … HOW TO TALK WRITER

WRITER is a deceptive parlance. To many people, it resembles English. But this is only on the surface.

Let’s take a look at the following statement, often used after the second or third or fourth glass of box wine at an alleged literary soiree:

I had no choice in becoming a writer; it’s my calling.

This is an easily understood cliché, if we concern ourselves solely with literal meaning.

But if we are aware of unique idioms and bodily gestures, have a grasp of social, economic, and psychological issues in a particular context, we understand these words to really mean:

You think I could ever hold a real job?

Let’s take a look at other expressions in WRITER–and their translations.

***
THE WRITER SAYS: I’m in negotiations with my publisher on the new book.
THE WRITER MEANS: They say it’s garbage and they don’t want it, so I’m begging.

THE WRITER SAYS: I’ve been offered a six figure advance.
THE WRITER MEANS: I’m counting both sides of the decimal point.

THE WRITER SAYS: I want greater control of the marketing and promotional aspects, so I just might self-publish.
THE WRITER MEANS: Nobody wants to publish it. Bastards.

THE WRITER SAYS: Critical reaction was mixed.
THE WRITER MEANS: Some critics disliked it, others despised it. Bastards.

THE WRITER SAYS: Stephen King’s going to blurb me.
THE WRITER MEANS: I sent a book to Stephen King. Bastard.

THE WRITER SAYS: We’ve got some motion picture interest.
THE WRITER MEANS: My brother-in-law just bought a camcorder.

THE WRITER SAYS: I start my book tour next week.
THE WRITER MEANS: Now that gas is cheap again, I’m driving upstate where my cousin will let me stay overnight so I can do a signing at a new 7-11.

THE WRITER SAYS: Now that I’ve attained literary success, I’m thinking about returning to pursue my academic career
THE WRITER MEANS: Once I get my GED, there’s a two year associates program in electrical engineering. Those guys always have work.

THE WRITER SAYS:. I count Hemingway, Balzac, and St. Augustine among my influences.
THE WRITER MEANS: I know other famous names, too: Dwight D. Eisenhower, Hermione Gingold, Douglas Fairbanks, Carole Landis, Van Lingle Mungo.

THE WRITER SAYS: It’s got to be spontaneous for me so I never outline.
THE WRITER MEANS: You think I planned it to come out this mess?

THE WRITER SAYS: I base my characters on fascinating real life people
THE WRITER MEANS: The world may be full of interesting people but those I know visit fabric shops and like French fries and are trying to figure out if it’s the heat or the humidity.

THE WRITER SAYS: It’s just great to see those writers I know and admire hit that #1 spot on the bestseller list!
THE WRITER MEANS: Bastards.

THE WRITER SAYS: Oprah’s considering it for the club.
THE WRITER MEANS: I sent her a book. Lady bastard.

THE WRITER SAYS: Where do I get ideas? Everybody has his own way
THE WRITER MEANS: I once had an idea but I can’t remember it.

THE WRITER SAYS: Nice guy, but Larry King didn’t know what he was talking about and I had to tell him so.
THE WRITER MEANS: But I was still pretty angry so I turned off the TV.

THE WRITER SAYS: John Grisham? Great writer, great guy.
THE WRITER MEANS: Never met the bastard.

THE WRITER SAYS: I’m not so sure I like the direction my editor wants me to take on the new book
THE WRITER MEANS: What’s she mean, write it in English?.

THE WRITER SAYS: We are working on the sale of foreign rights.
THE WRITER MEANS: Miguel had a copy of the book when he was deported back to El Salvador.

THE WRITER SAYS: Born writer? Well, I know I’m in it until the day I die.
THE WRITER MEANS: Not long from now, because what freelancer can afford health insurance?

THE WRITER SAYS: Writing keeps me young.
THE WRITER MEANS: Goddamn, am I old.

THIS WRITER SAYS: End of year. Happy holidays. Thanks for reading us Unpluggers. See you in a brand new year.

THIS WRITER MEANS: Know you know when I’m being faux curmudgeon, so you know I mean … Happy holidays. Thanks for reading us Unpluggers. See you in a brand new year–a year we enter with renewed hope for the world and its future.

To: JERRY WILLIAMSON IN SPRINGTIME
by Mort Castle
Dear Jer,

I figured it a good time to write because it is April and spring has come to Illinois–more or less, it hath, because last week snow still lay on the ground and a mixture of the same and rain is predicted for this weekend …

See, remembering over the many years, it was always this season when we both shook off hibernation and got springtime-goofy in those long, late night phone calls in the era when making a long distance telephone call was an event, a ritual, and a real expense. (Yes, dear hearts, hard to believe, but there was a time when Blue Tooth was not surgically inserted in the human ear at birth!)

“Hey, Jer, it’s springtime and the snakes are molting!”

“Uhm, uhm, uhm, I’ve been waxing poetic and the floors but I think I might have left my good leg at the Steak ‘n’ Shake.”

Bouncing words and laughs–wordplay!–at each other. And then you were onto the good stuff, the news, the ideas, the possibilities: Always a Williamson project or two in the works and a dozen or more a’borning: a new novel, this time combining Non-Euclidean geometry, silent movie history, werewolves, serial killers who are out to murder the Kabala and a lonely teenage waif whose parents won’t let her date the Golem. Or the newest MASQUES; you’re right, Jerry, no reason for that series not to go on forever. Or a series of columns or something that got all the neurons sparking in that ultra-quick and world-and-history-ranging brain you had.

(Jerry, I told lots of other people but did I ever tell you I considered you the only “genius” writer I knew? It wasn’t because you knew so damned much, though you did know so damned much, but you could find ways to connect it all and make others give credence to those connections.)

But what was I doing? You always wanted to know. Anything you could do to help me keep on doing the doing?

You always wanted to know.

Nah, Jer, we haven’t had that sort of telephone conversation for years. That’s somewhat your fault, what with your dying in 2005, but, I want you to know I miss our good talks. More than that, I’ll confess I am nostalgic for who we were in those spring seasons. Maybe time held us “green and dying” but the green felt fine –jes’ the sap a’rising–and the dying, hey, if you’re a writer, you can beat that wrap: A little talent, lots of perseverance, and some Good Luck, hey, you’ve got your shot at Immortality.

I also wanted to write to tell you the Gauntlet Press MASQUES V came out ever so fine. Your son, Gary Braunbeck, son in everything but DNA, definitely offspring of your heart and brain, did so well in making it happen. The anthology is Williamson’s guiding editorial vision aided and abetted by Braunbeck’s sniper sharp 20/20. Gary’s just won two new Stokers. He’s helped and is helping others write. I know your pride in Gary, and, wherever you’re hanging out these days, Jer, you can keep on being proud of him.

Oh, rebirth type news for this spring of 2008: You have some publications coming up. I’ll publicize ‘em as soon as deals and dates are fixed and firm, but it seems the graphic novel format books we produced with David Campiti that we called J. N. WILLIAMSON’S MASQUES: AN ANTHOLOGY OF ELEGANT EVIL will be out in new deluxe editions. And how many times did we kick around a collaboration? Looks like we’ve got that in the works with your Sherlock Holmes novella: THE SPECTRE OF DEATH. With the four-fifths of the story you left behind and that detailed outline–I still use the outlining method you taught me on every lengthy fiction I undertake–I’ll finish it up. And you know, something? I don’t anticipate any problems in our working together on this one.

“Ever the best of friends; ain’t us, Pip?” as Joe said to Pip.

(Jer, it’s not easy these days finding folks with whom I can swap the good old lit’ry allusions. I’m grateful for Adam Niswander who can sling great lines of poetry from Robert Service and Don Blanding, the Vagabond Poet. When Niswander starts to top me, however, I toss in some Yiddish theater verse; that’ll teach ‘em bastards to mess around Chancevyville!)

Oh, and Jerry, I did want you to know that I’m just back from the World Horror Convention, which has been my regular spring event for eight years. This year, Salt Lake City was the site, and the chair, Charlie Harmon, and her crew did a splendid job. In my writing workshop, we had the largest turnout ever–and there is no one who was there who cannot succeed in the writing business. And yeah, as always, I started with the Prime Rule of Writing, that so simple maxim that can be so hard to follow: YOUR WRITING MUST BE INTERESTING.

You taught me that, Jer, and it’s the foundation for what I write and what I teach. And yes, hooray for me, way back I did thank you for that teaching and I thanked you again more than a few times at the WHC workshops.

You know, Jer, at WHC, one young guy referred to me as one of the “great statesmen of horror,” and it felt weird, the realization of just how long I have been at it, and to realize that what I preach about this writing business not being a sprint but instead a marathon seems to be true after all. But couldn’t help thinking, and it made me sad, that a certain guy I consider one of the “great statesmen of horror” wasn’t at the convention.

Wish you had been. Your peers and compadres (us other “statesmen”), would have been glad for your company. And the young ones, these horror writing very nice young people of whatever age, they know your work, they like you, they really, really like you.

So, that’s the letter for now, except for one other thing.

It’s spring and I miss you, pal.

Best,

Mort Castle

What do you think of this? he wants to know.

This is his concept for a horror novel and he is enthusiastic.

Because I have written horror stories, have led workshops on writing horror, have edited a book dealing with horror, he has come to me.

And then, he shares this with me.

***

Earlier, on the morning of this same snowy day, I turned on my radio to learn which tollways were icy and if commuter trains would be running late.

Tollways were normal and trains were on time and there was news about what had happened in Tinley Park, a suburb some 20 minutes from mine. Five women had been found shot to death in the back room of a clothing store. Police announced they had died in a botched robbery attempt.

***

Vampires, he says. More vampires than any one book has ever had. A greater variety of vampires. Some will drink only the blood of children. Others have forsworn drinking blood. Some are devout Christians. Others see themselves in a God-abandoned universe…

***

The clothing store specialized in plus sized apparel. This was mentioned so often that it is as though it were something of great importance or even a clue or a code.

Mentioned almost as often was the fact that the victims had been bound with duct tape. It was not thought to be duct tape that had been in the store. The killer had brought his own.

***

You see what we can have here? It’s a totally claustrophobic atmosphere, with walls of blood and rivers of blood and showers of blood. The poor human beings who are caught up in this world, well, what chance do they have? It’s like Lovecraft meets the Naturalists…

***

The women who died ranged in age from 22 to 42. They had not known each other prior to their becoming the women who were bound with duct tape and shot during a botched robbery attempt.

***

Okay, I ask, what about the people?

They’re, you know, just people, like people you could meet everyday. But now, they have to be more than just people, okay, because they are encountering the Greatest Horror anyone could ever know. There is no safety.

So they can hide or they can fight.

And as they confront the horror, they have to reach deep within themselves.

***

One woman was the store manager. One woman was a nurse. One woman was a recent college graduate. One woman was a social worker at a high school. One woman was a stay-at-home mom.

***

You see, there’s not just gimmick! There’s humanity here.

***
Something quite strange happens. It is late in the day when we have the news that there was a sixth woman. She was shot but the bullet just grazed her neck. She is alive and in protective custody.

We do not learn if she was shot first or fourth or last. Somehow, the news teams are held at bay and not permitted to ask if she was praying or crying or if she now feels there is a special grace in the universe reserved for her.

The survivor is able to provide police a description. There is a reward offered.

The survivor says, “My deepest sympathies and condolences go out to their families and friends … Please know that during the unfathomable events of that day, their thoughts were focused on you and coming home. My heart aches that they were unable to do so …”

***

So, what do you think, he asks. Do I have horror or do I have horror?

Vampires hunting people

I don’t know, is what I say.

Because right now, I don’t think he knows anything about horror.

And neither do I.

STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED

Many of my compatriots have tackled the issue of “Writer’s Block,” but, in that I can’t think of anything original, I decided to commence Unplugging 2008 with that very topic my own self.

Q. What is Writer’s Block?

A. Writer’s Block is the situation in which you cannot write.

I do hope that was helpful. Next month, I’ll devote eight words to the subject of “Mental Health for Writers.”

Okay, enough boffo humor.

Granted, there are those rare writers who have never encountered writer’s block. Their production is as regular as Lawrence Welk’s alleged rhythm section. Bill O’Ladin, creator and sole author of the high-tech, monosyllabic men’s adventure series, Stone Bloodsquash: Terror Trampler, (Number 1,014, Wiesbaden Waterboarders just released, Philaslot Books, mmb), brags he’s never missed his 90,000 word novel per month deadline.

“Writers who are blocked,” opines O’Ladin, “simply have never found what works. Way back when, I discovered the formula for Terror Trampler and I’ve stuck to it. Oh, I change locales: Sausalito Slaymakers, Osaka Osamas, Nogales Nutjobs, etc., and my protagonist uses different weapons in each adventure: a kosherkin, which is a six pointed throwing star, or a carbide cannon from the Johnson Smith catalog, or a Tom Cruise missile. And certainly, Stone has changed over the years. His weight’s gone from 193 to 197.

“But I always know what I’m doing and how to do it because I’m always doing the same thing! McD’s doesn’t try to invent a new quarter pounder with cheese every week. What’s it going to weigh this week? Should we put cheese on it?”

“Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.”

When challenged with that quote from Bernard Berenson, O’Ladin responds, “What series does he write? I’ve got 100 billion readers in over four countries.”

Many writers, however, do have IQs, and so cannot approach wordcrafting in the O’Ladin way; they are prone to periods of undesired non-productivity.

Constance Smiley had authored three children’s books, Herbert the Happiest Hedgehog, Orville, the Optimistic Opossum, and Jamal, the Jolliest Jackal, which won the Insulin Award for Uplifting Kiddy Lit, when writer’s block fell on her like a ton of blocks.

“I couldn’t write a thing. No jovial jackass, no ebullient emu, no merry monkey… Zero,” she recalls, lighting up an unfiltered (copasetic) Camel.

It required 28 days of intensive psycho and aroma therapy, which was exactly what was covered by her health insurer, for her to learn that her “Inner Censor” was holding her back.

“You see,” Smiley explains, as much to herself as to anyone who might possibly be listening, “Growing up, I was always the one who tried to do the right thing. Oh, maybe I yearned to try something wild and crazy, you know, like my slutty sister, or my pretend Uncle Jack, but I had this voice within telling me ‘No, no, no.’” Smiley knocks back three fingers of Early Times, which, while lacking smoothness, will get you there.

“Mr. Inner Censor,” sneers Smiley through smoke, “was still with me, still always saying ‘It would be wrong.’ Inner Censor went to work on my writing: You can’t write this, you can’t write that!’”

Laughing, Smiley pours Early Times. “I had to find a way to shut Inner Censor up.” She laughs. Coughs. Laughs. “Make that, drown the little bastard.”

Apparently she did, for now Constance Smiley reaches for a manuscript. In a voice ripe with incipient emphysema, she reads, “‘Hop your green tail onto this lily pad. It’s prime slime time. Let’s go frog giggin’!’ Then Freddy’s tongue shot out, but he was not catching flies…”

Constance Smiley’s newest is called Freddy, The Fornicatingest Frog and it will be published in June by Big Golden 8 Page Press.

When Jogging with an Electric Shaver, a humorous memoir of growing up in a poverty-stricken, inbred, bipolar, sexually and sarcastically abusive family was published to stunning reviews — “The most comic and lyrical depiction of rape and beating with extension cords of the season!” — and three chair-flinging appearances on Springer, author Clarence Harrow seemed unlikely to be a victim of writer’s block.

“But I was,” he attests. Always a believer in generic metaphysics and liking the philosophies found in brightly colored New Age catalogs, Harrow tried a styrofoam diet, hours spent in a Christian Science Reading room, a double sided DVD of Zen teaching and flower arrangement, accordion playing (which led to his almost completely severing his left nipple during a performance of “Lady of Spain,”) and such psychoceramic mind enhancing drugs as Pepcid and Mentos in cola.

“One day, I just began crying,” Harrow remembers. “I looked at the sheet of paper in front of me and there was nothing there. There was absolutely nothing. Not a single thing.

“It was then I heard a voice. It was as though I had an iPod™®® in my head. Only without earbuds. The voice was spiritual. Like the Reverend Ike back in the day.

“And that voice told me…”

Nothin’ from nothin’ leaves nothin’

“And that voice told me…”

You gotta have somethin’

“And there was this pretty nice, if somewhat dated organ riff, but that’s not important. What’s important is I had a revelation. It was like Moses at the burning bush, only I didn’t have to take off my shoes or anything weird.”

“You gotta have somethin’.

“I had to have somethin’. Didn’t matter what it was. Anything. As long as it was somethin’. Not nothin’.”

“Just like that! Bam! Presto Sta-Puff! I started writing again. I started writing something.”

he heard old man was floating see more level of conscious beckoning him he knew it was and he was even if you don’t you hear all smiling and hell with the done million degrees shower run very hot while he razor smells like burnt plastic erases another patch spot the razor in the kitchen snap against her heel when she table

We have, above, a sample of the something Clarence Harrow has been writing. “What is it? I don’t know. It’s something. I sent in 50 pages of it to the National Institute for the Arts and they sent me a 50 thousand dollar arts fellowship, signed me up to do a series of readings at Starbucks and VFWs around the nation, and I’ll be appearing at the Ford Center with Chuck Palahniuk, Sally Field, Dr. Phil, and the Amazing Kreskin.”

While Harrow’s blockbuster came from a psychic source deep within him, aid of another person can play an important role.

“Ooh,” she says, “Writer’s block is icky. It is so, Ohmigod, bad.” Tiffany Amber Spangler-Fowler speaks in a sort of “swallowing burps breathlessly” manner that reminds you of Marilyn Monroe, had Marilyn Monroe not been feigning stupid helplessness. “I had no reason to think I’d ever have writer’s block…”

But it happened. No matter that Ms. Spangler-Fowler earned her MA, an MFA, and a Publisher’s Clearing House Post Grad Certificate in Creative Writing from Benford on Hudson Near Puddlington (UK) University. Several years after matriculations, she decided it was time to attempt to write something.

“But I couldn’t!” she wheezes. “I couldn’t finish anything.” With a wisdom that belies her intellect, she adds, “That was because I couldn’t start anything.”

Spangler-Fowler did not lose herself in a morass of self-examination and introspection. Throughout her time at the university, she had found she could always rely on teachers to serve as older and wiser mentors. “I spent a lot of time under some very fine men. And women.”

Thanks to a classified ad not far from a column listing “Intimate Deep Massage,” Spangler-Fowler discovered The Professor. “He insists I call him that. He deserves to be a real professor, and not just a man with lots of leather accessories. The Professor explained to me that all artists need discipline. He offered to discipline me.”

In order to motivate her, Spangler-Fowler explains, The Professor employs The Motivator. A typical weekly session begins with The Professor rigorously questioning Spangler-Fowler about her productivity. “If I’ve written only one page, instead of the 20 I’m supposed to, well…”

She blushes blushingly as her whispery voice drops to a seemingly fevered sibilance, “Well, then I have to be punished.”

The Professor employs The Motivator. “And after each one,” Spangler-Flower explains, “I have to say, ‘Thank you for motivating me. May I have another?’”

When Tiffany Amber Spangler-Fowler leaves The Professor, “I can’t sit still! I’m just burning up to get at my writing so I can maybe someday please…” Her misty eyes glaze over and then her glazed eyes mist over…”The Professor.”

Writer’s Block. It’s like the weather. Everybody talks about it, but mostly, it’s the humidity.

And it’s also a way for me to kick off my contribution to Storytellers Unplugged 2008, for which I have never had so bad a writer’s block that I missed a deadline.

Not even this one.

AN INTRODUCTION

I like language. I use it a lot.

In fact, I don’t think I’d have become a writer were it not for language.

***

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GRAMMAR

Subjects and verbs don’t have to agree but they should at least tolerate one another.

Nobody is sure where end marks of punctuation go in regard to quotation marks. Except for the Spanish. But they put them in upside down as well as right side up so they have their own problems.

To make sure, then, try it this way:

“Hello,”, Mort said. “I think I’ll rant about language today!”! Mort added, ,”, If that’s okay with you.”.

ON USING SENTENCE FRAGMENTS

Don’t.

Except sometimes.

“Okay?”?

A SIMPLE RULE

The transgenedered verb may only be used as a declension in the sublatative or presumptive voice. This is based on the Latin: Ergo cogito bluto hoho.

***

OH, YEAH? SEZ ME!

You can turn any words into terms of vituperative threat.

I will post your toasties and maneuver your heimlich!

I’ll indigo you, girl!

Bare naked, ladies!

Potter my Harry!

Cheese curl!

If I were you, though, I’d never threaten anyone with … I’ll wonka your willie.

***

UNDEFINING

How to strip all meaning from a word:

Read the following aloud:

Foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot oot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot oot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot foot

Get it? Foot, yes you do. Foot what I foot am foot at? Good foot, you foot!

***

THE GREAT COMMUNICATOR

I listened to George W. the other day.

What did language ever do to him?

***

LOVE AND HATE

We have a special category of illegal activity called Hate crimes. I’d like to see a new classification added to the jurisprudential lexicon: Love Crime.

as in…

I loved him so much I had to kill him when I learned he was foot with that foot down the foot. Killed her, too, the foot. Shot her right in the foot.

***

UGLY MAGIC WORDS

I’ll bet you have a magic word! When you hear this word, you are utterly repulsed, totally disgusted. It’s a visceral thing. The word ticks at the gag reflex, makes you want to vomit.

Thought so.

For the next 30 seconds, don’t think of that word.

***

AS WEBSTER HAD IT

Lewis Carroll was full of prune whip: Words mean exactly what they mean and that’s it.

For instance… Calendar.

You know what means?

Right. It means calendar.

It sure as hell doesn’t mean foot.

End of discussion.

***

FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Granted, in any country worth visiting, everyone will know English, or at least understand enough if you just talk loudly and slowly, but in case you need a few casual phrases…

FRENCH

Georges Cluny chevrolet coupe. Oou’reyay oiletstay areay owherenay earnay asay ilthyfay asay eythay useday otay ebay!

SPANISH

¿Senor, frito loco taco dorito, chess? ¿¿Ooyay ikelay ihauhauchay?¿?

GERMAN

!DEUTSCHLAND Panzer kindertotenlieder! Achtung mein Volswagen! Onquercay anyay ountriescay atelylay?

RUSSIAN: Nietschevo pravda tolstoy Tovarich da, da, malenoko boris bolshoi! Atwhay? Inenay ina orningmay anda obodynay’s unkdray etyay?

ARABIC: Salaam ali baba ibn sesame bin bubbelah! Erehway ancay Iay indfay a oodgay osherkay othay ogday?

***

LANGUAGE FINIS

“And,”, Mort said, “think we’ll end this edition of STORYTELLERS UNPLUGGED, my last for 2007, with that universal expression of best wishes for a joyous holiday and a good new year:”:

“Foot!”! One and all!

Mort Castle
October 8 2007

It’s story time once again, so…

14 VERY SHORT HORROR STORIES
(in slightly different form, originally appearing in the
Program Book of the 14th World Horror Convention)
by
Mort Castle

1. the music of the night

“Listen to them, the children of the night!” Dracula said to his guest. “What music they make!”

“It is terrible, but I will try to work with them,” said the Phantom.

2. MIND CONTROL

In the next 60 seconds, think of those horrible, depressing, painful, miserable, flat-out and utterly wretched experiences you’ve lived through; come up with as many as you can.

Good.

Now think of the words: If only . . .

Okay. All through. Don’t think of any of this stuff again.

3. OF COURSE THEY SAVED THE BRAIN

Hitler’s brain. And of course the head made such a practical and
aesthetically pleasing container, that it, too, was saved.

And the brain decided it was time.

And the eyes blinked. And the Chaplinesque mustache wriggled like a mildly palsied caterpillar.

And the men of science, Japanese and German and Russian and Korean and Cuban and Saudi and American, waited.

Then the mouth issued the command: “Ja! Der Tag!”

And simultaneously Japanese and German and Russian and Korean and Cuban and Saudi and American fingers pressed the buttons.

And every cell phone in the world exploded.

4. KIP’S QUESTION

kip was four years old and like nearly
every day he had been hell on jet-skis all day

aluminum foil in the electrical outlets and
see what happens when
you turn on every faucet in the house
and let’s play bowling with cantaloupe
in the supermarket and
she had thought about smacking
him and smacking him but good
but as a kid she had been smacked good too
many times for too many reasons she
usually had not understood and
now even if kip should be in bed
she did not want to fight with him to
get him to bed and he was just sitting
there about three-quarters of an inch
from the television and the news was
on and kip was watching because he
would watch just about anything that
moved for about 26.5 seconds or even a minute
sometimes if it was loud and flashing
minute sometimes and
then a story came on with a lady
being taken away by police and the
lady was a mom who had been telling
lies about someone stealing her car
with her two kids in it because what
really happened was she was the one
who killed her kids and
now kip was big eye riveted to the
television and
then kip turned his head and very
quietly asked
why did that mom kill
her kids
and even though she did not want
to say it something low and mean and
insistent made her say it and
what she said was
because they were bad

5. WEDDING GIFT

Belittle me, will she? Hah!

The Shrew! Call me feeble and weak. will she? Hah!

Dare to laugh at my … stamina and demean my technique? Call me
fool, will she? Dare I think–her words, mind–I could even hope to provide her the least satisfaction?

Hah!

Very well, then, my dear. Oh, very well but perhaps not so well for you.

On the night of our. . . nuptial celebration… I assure you, you will receive a quite special wedding gift.

Call me mad, will she? Hah!

I have created life, do you hear me, LIFE in the laboratory!
Hah!

Let us see what our most singular wedding guest can do for you.

6. The child molester reveals the secrets of success

I know how to listen.

7. Headline: AGENT OF BIOLOGICAL WARFARE FOUND IN IRAQ

They brought him in.

They sat him down.

They made him confess.

WMD?

No, he had a URI, upper respiratory infection.

His orders?

Sneeze or cough on as many Americans as possible.

8. ADVICE

Why don’t you just ask that nice colored man to bust up the chiffarobe for you?

9. Inspiration

Couldn’t come up with anything.

Zero. Nada.

Went outside. In the garden, he heard the roses singing.

Went inside. Sat down.

Then Walt Disney created Silly Symphonies.

10. URBAN MYTH: HALLOWEEN

Got to love the Internet.

Hey, razor blades in apples, Ex-Lax chocolate pumpkins. Peanut brittle with needles. LSD gum (talk about double your pleasure).

All those Halloween horror stories, why, that’s all bogus. You know that, don’t you?

Because you know how to find answers fast and you have checked
out all the Latest BS and Vintage BS dot corns, the Urban, Suburban, and Rural Legends websites. No murderer on the extension phone upstairs, no hook hanging from the door handle, no fingers in the Doberman’s mouth, no beehive hair-do providing condominiums for all manner of biting, boring, breeding insect. . .

And you’ve got a built-in BS detector, right?

Trick or treat.

Treat or trick.

I look forward to a visit from your kids this Halloween.

11. American Iconography in a South American Revolution

“. . . able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!” Miguel’s English is accented, naturally, but enthusiastic. A pause, not all that long really.

“No,” Juan says.

Miguel laughs. “Que lastima. ”

Such a pity.

“A mi me toca,” Juan says.

My turn.

High above the verdant jungle, Juan grips Sister Consuela’s arm and hurls her from the helicopter.

“The Flying Nun!” Juan says.

12. in the nursery

Stop it! Stop that screaming at once!

Put something in his mouth!

Do not twist about like that! Stop your carrying on!

That’s better. Now, hold him more tightly.

His arms, John. There.

Sit on him, Michael.

We shall soon have this shadow sewn back on Mr. Peter Pan, Esquire, shan’t we just?

Even with so little cooperation.

13. REST FOR THE WEARY

No, no, sit down please.

You’re safe here. Tomorrow, you can tell me everything about the
people chasing you . . .

They’re… Well, whatever, tomorrow we can discuss it.

Sleep now. You’re exhausted, aren’t you?

Your drink? Please, just diet soda.

Why would I want to …

That’s it, stretch out.

Here, let me slip this nice pod under your head.

Sleep.

14. EXPIRATION DATE

Monday. June 6, 1985

And so you sit down to eat breakfast.

The clink-click of the cereal in the bowl is almost more than you can bear, but you have to eat because …

You have to eat.

And you take the carton of milk and on the side is a picture of a child.

Your child.

And on the top of the carton is a date: June 8, 1985.

And on the wall by the telephone is a calendar you don’t have to look at to know the date that is circled is June 1 and within the circle is a clearly written lone word in your handwriting: Funeral.

Then you pour the milk on the cereal.

You have to eat.

You have to eat.