Monday, March 30, 2009

Nacho Toof

On a walk back in the park, my son discovered the jawbone from a deer. The rest of the skeleton was (thankfully) not around, so I assume that a coyote had carried the jaw to its resting place, but who knows? OneJr picked up the jawbone and carried it around for the remainder of the day.

Yesterday, he asked me for the pliers. "Why do you need pliers?" I inquired, having forgotten about the deer jaw.

"I just need them," he replied. We eyed each other, and he realized that I was not going to give him pliers without having the opportunity to supervise his activity.

"I need them to pull a tooth," he finally revealed. That doesn't sound good, I thought. Where is his sister? Then, I remembered the deer jaw.

"Do you mean a deer tooth?" I asked. He nodded. I gave him the pliers.

Each night, when Mrs.Ear goes to kiss him goodnight, OneJr. asks her to lie down with him for a few minutes. Not last night. "Not tonight Mom," he said.

She came into our bedroom and described what had occurred. Piecing together the puzzle, we both realized the scheme. It was the tooth.

Sure enough, after he was sleeping, we checked and discovered the deer tooth under his pillow. He was trying to defraud the tooth fairy.

The tooth fairy left him a note but no cash. Nice try son.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

"Life is a state of mind"



Do you remember the classic existential movie Being There? Peter Sellers plays a simpleton named Chauncy Gardner who fails to recognize any difference between television broadcasts and reality. Recall his dispute with the muggers who mistake him for a mob kingpin due to his lack of fear. Chauncy patiently tries to use his television remote in order to make the robbers go away as though they were just a bad TV show. Recall also the "I like to watch" episode.

Eventually, Chauncy becomes a powerful and famous political and economic advisor with his comments about gardening work. His gardening advice is taken as metaphoric genius about the state of the economy.

Yesterday, I was reading plans to pile more horseshit onto our national situation, and I thought of old Chauncy. Sure, fertilizer is necessary. A little added fertilizer may be fine at times. However, when the problem is too much fertilizer, you don't pile more horseshit on top of the horseshit you just finished dumping. All that will grow is fungus and flies.

I'm sure this garden will recover eventually, but why not clean it up now and start over. It would be better and healthier sooner. Why are we trying to resuscitate plants which have rotten roots and dead flowers? How long could it possibly take the Wall Street geniuses to create a new banking system if the existing banks were liquidated?

Chauncy was dumb, but he was honest and frank, and he could tend a garden.

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Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Monday, March 23, 2009

Homeless Leprechauns

Yesterday, my family and I went for a hike back in the park near our house. Part of the walk involved climbing up a rock outcropping. Many of you will remember it as the place where I threw up at the last Rusty. It is also where Bunderwear lost his sunglasses 10 years ago. Anyway, it is a fairly steep climb up about 200 feet of elevation. To my 5 year old daughter and 7 year old son, it seemed so remote that at first they suspected that few other people had been up there.

However, on the hike up, they noticed signs of life - odd pieces of trash mainly. "Maybe somebody lives up here," hypothesized EarJr.

My son was the first one to reach the top of the rock, and while we were still climbing up, he peered over the edge and shouted to my daughter excitedly, "Someone does live up here! Come look!" We scrambled up and sure enough, under a rock shelf there was some newspaper and signs of a fire.

My daughter carefully surveyed the clues and then pronounced, "Well, it is either leprechauns or homeless people."

"How can you tell," I wondered aloud.

"Homeless people don't have a home, and leprechauns always create mischief," she explained.

Hard to argue with that logic.

We the People, in order to form a more perfect Nation..

The idea of any of this really makes me feel lazy. Is that what he's talking about? I guess I need to buy a gun? Will someone please explain this to me?

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Moraler Dilemma; formerly, TRI-lemma

As some of you may be aware, I have recently changed my abode from the slave quarters beneath the coliseum (behind the lion/tiger litter box, and under the elephant piss-pad--leakage was a constant issue), to a more respectable location. Unfortunately, the neighbor across the alley (a young, attractive--though totally insane--fitness buff) never closes the blinds on her cathedral windows, and never wears a stitch of clothing when she's home. Left, and right, bare boobs, baby chute in graphic view, everything. She stands in the window. On the other side of my place, is a young couple who also have no blinds and have sex regularly on their window sill. And she is stacked--no silicon, which is weird here. Behind me, my neighbor bangs his girlfriend (whom I have met several times) all day long--but, thankfully, she just moved to Atlanta. Sounds like paradise for a Quagmirian pervert such as myself? One might think so, but I haven't left my place for days, and work is starting to call me over and over again to wonder where I am. What do you think I should tell them?

Friday, March 13, 2009

The Definitive History of The Rusty Sessions

OK, help me fill in the blanks:

2008 - Mount Vernon, Wisconsin. OneEar turns 40, DocBok closes the Yellow Bar forever. Amps don't work, fire won't light, Bundespanties leaves early.
2007- Baton Rouge/New Orleans
2006 - Lake Zurich, IL - Dogtrack Rusty
2005- Baton Rouge/New Orleans
2004 - Cape Cod
2003 - Baton Rouge/New Orleans
Boston
Nags Head, North Carolina
Williamsburg VA
Different Cabin in Ohio
Cabin in Ohio
Mount Vernon, Wisconsin
....
Washington DC
1992- Chicago, Illinois. The First Rusty Session.
1991 - Chicago, Illinois. The Pre-Rusty Rusty.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Bunder-clarification Wear, or, 'the effects of alcohol on cerebral function over time'



From the commentary:
"He" responds to nothing. I've never seen "his" genitals, and I'm sticking to that story.


Yeah, just like you don't know how the bear poop and torn fur got in that hotel room, either. Sure.

I think I am forced to aid your historians' addled memory, since that seems to be what you are relying upon. You seem to be mixing your metaphors between the First Rusty, and the Second Rusty. It’s called confabulation, and your kind are known for it. The virgin voyage of the Rusty sessions did not contain Alceste, nor any readily identifiable females of the species. Alceste and Colyp still lived in Spain. Cocoa NoGogo was a pining wad of Irish rejection. When you say "late fall" of 1992, it is somewhat an understatement--it was so "late" in fall, that it was actually the beginning of winter, 1991. I was in my first year of medical school, you were in your first year of law school, and Bundy was trying desperately to be like you. And you were trying desperately to be like me, because I had already finished my first set of exams for the semester and had about 2 weeks to kill over the winter break. You, however, had yet to take your exams, and kept winging about wanting to "do well" on them. Bundy had driven down for the weekend to see me in the world's largest natural seaport, since he needed a break from the law school application process, continued defeat with such, and his grueling life as the page/piss boy at Crowlen, Heffeweisen, Mooring, and Rubenstein (“Wait!” he says. “No RUBENSTEIN”, he says. “Not in THAT firm!”). Don’t you recall the famous call he made—the first and last, as you pointed out—on Monday, saying he was sick and wouldn’t be in? He was completely distraught at having pulled a fast one, and we cheered him on, ignoring his career concerns. It was early a.m. due to the one-hour time difference, and I believe we started drinking sangria as soon as he hung up the phone. He moped for hours and through the entire 15-hour drive back home, and has never completed a Rusty session in satisfactory fashion since.

It was a cheery, yet dark time. We were all a bit disenfranchised with little self-esteem due to our ages and positions in life. The winter solstice was upon us, and I cannot remember seeing the sun at any point after departing. I recall no evidence of daylight during any part of the trip, except as we departed sunny Norfolk, VA. It was about 70 degrees without a cloud in the sky there. Bundy and I had been out drinking the night before with some of my school-mates, and were faced the next morning with no plans for activity and a three-day weekend in front of us. We sat staring at each other in my apartment there, and I said, “Let’s go and see Cocoa. Why don’t we just jump in the car and drive to Chicago? I’ll drive my car.” He laughed and said yeah, right, and we were the right age and percent bored, with no plan, to jump in my starship and head for the sky. Did I mention that the environmental controls on the starship Enterprise were faulty? We had no heat driving to one of the coldest place on Earth, the windy city of Chicago. We had on hats and gloves, and our breath was forming an ice sheet on the inside of the windshield as we journeyed ever farther into the cold, dark night toward Chicago. Jeers from the toll-booth operators bounced off our frozen hides, and we responded deceitfully “nope” when they would ask our blue little faces if our heater was broken. “Nope. Why?”
“Because you can’t open your hand to release the quarter.”
“nope.”
We skirted the bottom of the glacial remains we call the Great (or at least Pretty Good) Lakes, too cold to become drowsy, and anticipating arrival at our friend Cocoa’s house. There weren’t really any cell phones or GPS devices then. Though we were flying in a very sophisticated space vehicle, I have no idea how we found his house. I think I used a map, and I think Bundy lost his navigation privileges after sending us in the wrong direction several times. We arrived about midnight or 1 am, to discover YOU had been contacted and were on your way. The sun did not rise in the morning, as far as I can remember, but I do remember the session as totally acoustic, consisting of two acoustic guitars, a harmonica, and the infamous shark’s teeth. A box of wine was our beverage of choice, in honor of Spain, though as is typical of America, this box was many times bigger than the Spanish boxes, and contained wine many times worse than its foreign counterpart. We were in the front room of the NoGogo palace. There was darkness all around us as we played, broken only by street lights shining through the NoGogo residence windows, and speckled red Xmas lights within the residence. We recorded on cassettes with a fourth-grade cassette deck, with our new-found one-eared recording producer/sheep perched on top, and we were very, very raw. Much like U2 before they became fat, rich, and lazy.

That, my senile old friend, was the First Rusty. We were fantastic, and those interesting young men with enthusiasm and spirit have long since died. Just look at Bundy and his yearly Rusty faux pas, if you don’t believe me.

The year that you described, with Sitnay and the minivan and Dina and the brand new NoGogo apartment with the “landlord” and the sisters arriving for the party (reception of some sort?) and BoBonna and the horse hormones and her ‘rag’-inspired headache and the snow and the rented cabin and YOU as a human sled with your spiffy big army jacket on the winterized golf course, that, my senile older-than-Brett-Favre friend, that was the Second Rusty. For the record.

Bundes-boxers or Bundes-briefs?


Where were we? Ah yes, I was relaying the life history of Clown Squad member and one note guitar soloist Bratwurstundsauerkraut aka Bundeskraut aka Bunderwear aka OneNoteSolo aka Ono.


Upon graduation from a prestigious East Coast school, Bunderwear did something. I can't remember what or why, but I do recall that he did not join Alceste, Coco, DokBok, Colyp and myself during the year(s) 1990-91 which the rest of us spent in Spain. Someone remind me of his excuse. Did he have a girlfriend?

Anyway, that brings us up to 1992. That is when the Clown Squad truly began to gel (like a reduction of animal renderings). The first true Rusty Session was held in the late fall of 1992. Exactly what happened has been lost to historians. There are video archives, but historians are too lazy to try to find them right now, soo historians will just rely upon their memory.

Back to 1992. It is believed that Bunderwear was living in Washington DC at the time. He was either attending or trying to attend law school. Alceste too was living in DC and was either running or trying to run the branch office of a national car rental company. Dok Bok was attending or trying to attend medical school. I believe he was living at the world's largest natural seaport. Coco had returned home to Chicago, and he was either marrying or trying to marry. Your hero and mine was attending his first year of law school in Wisconsin. I was either studying or trying to study for my first semester of law school exams when I received word that The Gang was getting together at Coco's house in Chicago.

In the anals of history, ranking among the all-time bad ideas is the decision of an alcoholic law student to go visit his alcoholic college buddies for a few days of alcoholic drinking and alcoholic music playing during the student's first semester law school exams. To this day, there are still heated discussions about whether this was the dumbest decision of all time. "Napoleon miscalculated by invading Russia," they'll say, "but this law student was really an idiot!" You see, in law school, there are no quizzes or papers or mid-terms. There is one 4 hour exam for each class, and these exams all fall within one 7 or 10 day period. It was during this critical period that I was invited to go galavanting off to Chicago for a few days of debauchery. How could I turn down such an invitation?

Bunderwear, Alceste and DokBok all drove to Chicago from DC. I think they drove one of Alceste's company vans, and I believe they brought with them our friend Sitnay. Sitnay is, how shall we say, the black puma. She doesn't play any musical instruments, so she fit right into the band.

Coco hosted the grand event along with his bride (I think). I may have brought my then-girlfriend along as well, but that doesn't seem right. That would add up to at least 3 women between the 5 of us, and I don't think our ratio has ever been that good. I doubt whether there were any babysitters there either, since none of us yet had any babies.

One noteworthy thing about the first Rusty Session was that, unlike most if not all of the 16 Rusty Sessions since, Bunderwear could not leave early.


More to follow

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Old One-Eye

One-eyed filmmaker conceals camera in prosthetic

BRUSSELS - A one-eyed documentary filmmaker is preparing to work with a
video camera concealed inside a prosthetic eye, hoping to secretly record people for a project commenting on the global spread of surveillance cameras.
...

"As a documentary maker, you're trying to make a connection with a person," he says, "and the best way to make a connection is through eye contact."

...
"The closer I get to putting this camera eye in, the more freaked out people are about me," he said, adding people aren't sure they want to hang around someone who might be filming them at any time."

I can sympathize completely. People are often freaked out about me as well.

It occurred to me that an interesting documentary with plenty of eye contact could be made by installing a camera in the prosthetic breast of a stripper. I imagine the nip-cam footage would proceed thusly: Backstage primping in mirror, briefly covered by star shaped object which is then ripped away to reveal 2 or 3 groups of men and a few singles, college boys hooting and holding up dollar bills, footage of the pole, the ceiling, the floor, the college boys, business men nudging one another, violent camera shaking side to side showing angled footage of the businessman's face, the pole, the ceiling, the floor, guy wearing sweat pants and holding out $100 bill, extreme close-up of his face, side to side, up and down, side to side, up and down, the tip of his finger, the palm of his hand, pull away, the pole, the ceiling, the floor, guy reaching for wallet, pulling out $15 for glass of Pepsi, disgruntled look guy's face...

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Happy Late Mardi Gras, Welcome to Lent


Here you can see your hero and mine in his standard action-pose, and a man with two in-tact ankles whose future is about to change thanks to a bladder-control problem. And a very, very grumpy "car lover" who was FANATICAL about some piece of crap vehicle he happened to either "own" or "drive" or "both". That guy needed to chill out. Curses, curses.

I gave up Catholicism this year for lent for the second year in a row. Thanks God for Saint Patrick this month. And if you don't find this post entertaining enough, perhaps we can talk the Chancellor into giving us another riveting account of his penny-pinching escapades in the arena of modern technology. I 'regret' delaying my morning bowel movement long enough to read his post and try to figure out what I was missing.