Ooooh, Spooky!!!

While I heart LiLu with every part of my being possible, while trying to not let it get creepy, I'm going to take a small break from the TMI tales for the next few turns of the Thursday cycle. There's a wonderful lady from Minnesota named Pearl who is just magnificent. She's one of those sweet-faced, innocent-looking ladies who revels in her dirty mind and has many an adventure on the public transit systems of the Twin Cities. Pearl also happens to be hosting a little Story Sharing Event on Thursdays where we tell scary stories, and I've decided to join in. I've got two scary stories which are true, one frightening, the other amusing. And then I'm going to try my hand at a short bit of fiction.

Today, we're going to do the true-but-funny story.

This takes place in my college years. Now, you've already met my friend Will on several occasions. My senior year, he lived next to me and oh the adventures we had. There were many a night when we stayed up too late, drinking, talking or, sometimes, smoking a cigar.


However, there was a third member in our little party. If Will was the Phineas to my Ferb, then Steve was our Perry. Like a platypus, Steve just sort of laid around making growly noises in his throat. Yet, he was adorable, in that duck-billed sort of way. I lived with Steve for a semester, and while he was a good guy, he had a really strange personal schedule. He would stay up until two or three in the morning, and then sleep through all of his morning classes. He'd get behind on his work, which would force him to stay up later to catch up, which would cause him to sleep later and miss his classes. He came back to the dorm late one night, after the library had closed, and I heard him say, "I have so much work to do! Oh, hey, I think I have time for one game of Tetris."

Despite all this sort of nuttiness with his schedule, Steve was a virtuoso. With everything. If it was mildly musical, he could play it. And play it well. He was truly talented, which is why he was studying music in college. To this end, Steve would often stay up late at night--when he wasn't trying to get caught up on missed assignments--practicing the piano, or composing, or just playing to relieve some stress or quiet some nerves.

One night, Will and I decide to take one of our late-night walks around the campus, where we'd shoot the bull and discuss important world events. Our walk eventually took us to the chapel basement where, conveniently enough, you were allowed to smoke. It was an old cafeteria used primarily for the priests who lived on campus, and some of the students. Now, it was basically a free space for clubs to meet and for people to come and hang out in the middle of the night.

So, there Will and I are, sitting in the chapel basement, and we pull out a pair of Arturo Fuente cigars--remember, we were in college. Try not to judge. We blaze those things up and over the course of an hour or two, we smoke them down. The air is fucking blue with cigar smoke. It's hanging in layers like the curtains of the tabernacle. We're admiring our handywork when we hear piano music coming from above.

It's sometime around two o'clock in the morning. Will looks at me and smiles. "That's Steve," he says.

We sneak up through some of the by-ways of the church and peer into the sanctuary, and, sure enough, there's Steve at the piano, practicing and writing some music for one of his classes.

"We should scare the Little Purple Guy," I suggest.

Will agrees. But, we decide it's too much to try and stay quiet all the way down the aisles of the church. So, we go back down to the basement and come up through a different accessway. This one opens up right next to where the piano is stationed toward the front of the sanctuary. Conveniently, there's a column close by. I've sketched a rough drawing of the situation to try and help you visualize what's going on.

Will and I hide in the doorway, watching Steve. He plays for a little bit, then turns and looks over his shoulder toward the altar. Behind the altar is a door that leads to the back of the church and is connected to the hall where the priests live. Apparently, sometimes, one of the priests would sneak down and listen to Steve play the piano, and so he kept checking to see if someone was there. Each time he looked, no one was there. I guess it was creeping him out.

Finally, he reached down to get some pencils, and I slipped out of the doorway and stood behind the pillar, peeking out as I could. Steve kept playing, I kept watching, waiting, trying to plan my next move. Will, all three hundred pounds of his erin-go-fuckin'-braugh, hid in the doorway.

Ever seen 6'1", 300+ pounds of Irishman try to hide in a doorway? It's quite comical.

So, I stood there, planning my next move, watching Steve. He's playing quietly. I'm thinking about trying to crawl across the floor and grab his feet from under the piano, but I don't think I can pull it off. So, I watch and wait. The chapel is painfully quiet except for Steve's playing, and the rushing sound of my own breath in my ears.

Steve turns once more, and reaches for something in his bag, so I leap out from behind the pillar, and, as Steve is turning around, I slam my hands down on the piano and give a wordless shout.

Steve looks up at the sound with a wide-eyed, terrified look on his face. He, too, gives a wordless shout, and heaves his pencils at me.

"Oh!" he says, after collecting himself. "Oh, oh, God, you scared me." I am doubled-over with laughter at this point. So is Will. Steve holds up his hand, which is involuntarily trembling. His voice is a wreck. His breathing hard and labored.

"Oh, oh, wow. You guys did a good job," he says. "You really scared me. Look, I'm still shaking." And then, he gets weird in a way that only Steve can. "Oh wow. Thank you, guys. I needed that. Oh, oh, the cleansing power of fear." He takes a deep breath.

"What are you guys doing here?" he asked.

"We were in chapel basement and heard you playing," I said. "We decided to come up and see what was going on."

"Oh, wow. Thank you guys, again. Oh, the cleansing power of fear. I feel so alive!" And then, "What were doing in chapel basement?"

"Smoking cigars," I said.

"Cigars? Oh, I want a cigar!"

So, all three of us head back downstairs. Steve proceeds to smoke two cigars. The air is absolutely thick with our pollution. At this point, I'm pretty much exhausted, the adrenalin no longer coursing through my veins after frightening my buddy and former roomy out of his skin. I excuse myself and go home to the dorm where I brush my teeth and fall into bed.

The next day, I asked Will how long they were in chapel basement. He told me they were there for a couple more hours. Steve smoked two cigars, and then threw up. I guess that's how they knew it was time to call it a night.

I realize that telling the story is nowhere near as frightening--nor as funny--as it was when I was there, but it is one of my favorite memories. For other, probably better-told scary stories, check out Pearl's site and follow some of her links.

Clearly, I Am 'Father of the Year' Material

Did you know kids are impressionable? It's true. Like, if you tell them something, no matter how outrageous it sounds originally, they'll believe you? And someone thought it'd be a good idea to let me raise not one but TWO of them? (Three, if my aim was off the other night...)

The other night, I was out in the yard with the kids. Now, my yard consists mostly of a hill in the front and a floodplain in the back. It's the kind of thing that would make my cities in Civ III rich, but for me, it's a pain in the ass to mow. That's not the point; I just felt like bitching.

There's a stream at the back of my property and woods all around, which means my back yard is cool, sometimes damp, and shaded. This is a perfect mushroom/toadstool growing environment, apparently. To that end, my son, Tank, had discovered a couple of toadstools in one section of the yard, and so he and I went looking for more. We found quite a few in a variety of colors--browns, whites, oranges--but since I'm not a mycologist, I can't really identify any of them. Plus, thanks to Tori Amos, I think mushrooms look like peezers, so I'm not really inclined to study them intensely.

So, there Tank and I am, wandering around the yard, searching for mushrooms, when I'm struck by a bit of inspiration to joke and kid. What can I say? I'm a fun guy! *rimshot*

Ahem.

While I wore a younger man's clothes, I spent, maybe a few hundred hours playing Super Mario Brothers on the original Nintendo system. This, of course, clouded my mind while we were searching for mushrooms and toadstools, and so I turned to Tank and said:

"You know, you really gotta watch out for those mushroom people. If you're not careful, they'll get you."

To this, he responded, wide eyed, with a gasp. "Really, daddy?" he asked.

Because I'm not above lying to a child to amuse myself, I responded with, "Oh yeah, and if they get you, it's all over. They're poisonous, so when the first one hits you, you'll shrink. If the second one gets you, it's game over."

Another gasp. Had I ended it there, things might have been alright.

"Normally, they travel in groups of two or three, so you've always got to watch out." Now he's getting a little frantic, so I figure it's time to tell him how to defend himself. "However, if you just jump on their heads, you'll be fine. They squish down and don't bother you anymore. If there's too many of them, just find some Italian guy to do the job for you. Ask for Mario."

All of this latter bit of advice went sailing over his head. All he took from the lesson was "Mushroom people...attack...poisonous...all over..."

Fast forward a couple of days. My wife is in the backyard with us. Tank finds some mushrooms and is terrified. He climbs into my wife's lap, frantic, telling of how the mushroom people will get him. She looks at me, unadulterated fury seething in her gaze.

"This is your fault, isn't it?" she asked.

Feigning innocence, I splay my fingers across my chest and with an angellically pure voice, I ask "Oh, why would you ever assume that?" A second later, I espy two more mushrooms growing up next to one of his toys.

"Oh no, Tank," I say aloud, "looks like they're going to get your banana car. Look there's two of them there." This sends him in to an apoplectic frenzy of fear. He tries to climb higher on my wife's lap, apparently satisfied to throw her to the ravages of the evil mushroom people in order to save himself (I've taught him well). The mushrooms, as they are wont to do, simply stand there, digesting the organic material at the base of their stems...menacingly!!!

My wife then tries to calm Tank, explaining that I'm being an asshole a jerk. I feel at this point that I should try to rectify the situation, so I walk over to a pair of mushrooms. They continue to do nothing.

"See, Tank, there's nothing wrong here. They're not attacking me. Come on over. You'll be fine." After several minutes of coaxing, he finally climbs down off my wife's lap and timidly crosses the grass, but won't get any closer than two feet away. "No, see, they're fine. They're not moving. They're just sitting here. You'll be okay."

He takes a step toward the mushrooms...and that's when I scream "OH MY GOD, TANK, HERE THEY COME!!!" and I kick the mushrooms at him. Screaming and crying, he dives back onto my wife's lap, climbs up her body, and sits on her head. I am, of course, hysterical with laughter, partly because of his reaction, but mostly because of my wife's reaction to the scene.

Finally, I talk him down and I find another pair of mushrooms, which I stomp. "See, that's how easy it is to take care of these things!" We spent another ten minutes stomping everything even remotely fungal.

After having rid the yard of those dastardly mushrooms, I sat back down, Tank on my lap now, my wife in the chair beside me. "See Tank," she says, "you don't need to be afraid of the mushrooms. They can't move."

"Yeah," I agreed, "you shouldn't be afraid of the mushrooms. However, you've really got to watch out for slime molds."

Does anyone know if the health care reform covers therapy for traumatic childhood experiences?

Totally Blowing Shit Up Tuesdays: Pumpkin Edition 2

Sorry this is getting to you a little late today. I meant to do it last night, but then I fell asleep on the couch, woke up, staggered upstairs to watch the end of the Jets and Dolphins game, and dick around on the computer in a very non-bloggy sort of way.

Okay, fine. I was playing Civ III. Again.

Fuck a duck.

As a consequence, I'm writing this over my lunch hour, which means it will probably be abbreviated and feature a lot less ridiculous Halloween costumes. Also, it means I'll be fucking hungry this afternoon.

Anyway, since it's October, I figured we'd revisit the detonation of all things pumpkin. I mean, aside from pie and jack-o-lanterns, they're pretty effing useless. Unless you factor in their bomb capabilities, or using them as giant boats for racing. Oh, those wacky kids from New England.

To wit, I bring you another edition of pumpkin detonation:

Well, that's one way to roast the pumpkin seeds.

Curious about where the name "pumpkin" comes from? Of course you are, bitch. Now sit down and pretend to be interested. Guys, pretend we're at dinner and there's a chance I'm giving up the sex later. Ladies...well, ladies pretty much ignore me all the time, anyway. So, carry on!

Pumpkin comes from the Greek word pepon, which means "large melon". The French adopted it as "pompon", and the English took it on as "pumpion", which got changed to "pumpkin" over here in the States. Man, could I unintentionally work in any more euphemisms for "breasts" in one paragraph? I think not, Sweater Kittens.

Pumpkins most likely originated in North America, as archaeological expeditions in Mexico have netted seeds in the 5,000 to 7,000 years old range, though no one can conclusively prove that the Aztecs were blowing shit up with them. Yet.

The nice thing about pumpkins is that they have a lovely hard rind (that's what she said) with a soft, pulpy inner core. You learn this quickly if you get married and have kids and everyone gets their own pumpkin at the holidays, and you are the one tasked with reaching your hand into a tight space and ripping out fistfuls of pumpkin guts for...everyone's...individual...pumpkin. What? Bitter? Me? Never! I love having orange shit under my fingernails until the new year.

This combination of hard outer shell and soft and gooey insides makes pumpkins excellent for bomb-making or for analogies for Clint Eastwood. The hard outer shell provides enough strength to contain the gasses in an explosion long enough for a good amount of force to be generated. The softness of the innards provides an excellent splatter pattern.

Oh, and one other thing: pumpkins aren't technically squashes. They're gourds, so they are related, but there's a few differences between them. If you're an insufferable douchebag with a botanical streak in him, this is important (read: how I'll act at this year's Halloween party!) but for everyone else, it's a side note. Also, a pumpkin is considered a fruit since it grows from the plants ovaries (kind of like tomatoes are fruits). If you want to wow your friends, you can tell them that the main nutritional value of pumpkins is their high levels of lutein and both flavors of carotene (alpha AND beta--beta being that which gets converted to Vitamin A in your body). This all means that pumpkins are good for your eyes, skin and gene transcription. Use that as an pick up line and I guarantee you'll be parting someone's thighs later that night*.

So, there you have it. Not only have we blown the pumpkins up, but we've also explored where they come from and what they do. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go stick my hands in some very unseemly places.

* I actually don't guarantee a damned thing. You've come to the wrong place if you're reading this blog looking for dating advice, loser.

Odds and Ends

Try Not to Breathe: Remember that little story I told you last Thursday? You know, the one where I puked almost on a girl I was having a wonderful first date with?

Well, last Thursday night, I re-enacted what happened to my wife. Apparently, everyone who told me that I should have called her back didn't get the full feel for what I had just done to this poor girl.

So, let me re-describe it. Imagine, someone has puckered up and has moved in to kiss you. Your lips touch. Just as they touch, you hear a horrible noise like a backed-up sink gurgling, and then the person whose lips are touching yours has his cheeks inflate like a pufferfish as vomit pours into his mouth. That's what it was like.

My wife screamed. She visibly shuddered. "Oh my God," she said, "that poor girl. No wonder she was so traumatized. That was awful."

And she had this reaction even without me actually puking into my mouth and then bringing it up in a wastebasket.

The One I Love: Everyone who told me that I should have called her back when we got back to school for the spring semester...we can only say what if.

If I had called her back...maybe we would have gone out again. I mean, yeah, she was really nice and seemed to really like me. I mean, she was kissing on me and holding my hand and snuggling up and all, right? Maybe we would have felt a spark, dated for the remainder of her undergraduate career, and then after she graduated, we could have gotten married. I don't know where she went to law school, but maybe it was ND. We could have finished our respective degrees at the same time, and then moved off to some fabulous location.

If that would have happened, maybe we'd have a couple of kids. Maybe I wouldn't have my evenings free. Maybe I wouldn't have started blogging. Maybe you would have no idea who the fuck I was. You'd walk down the street and think "Was that Tom Green? He's put on some weight."

If all of that had happened, I wouldn't have met my wife three months later. I wouldn't have gotten married. I wouldn't have moved to North By God Carolina and I wouldn't have worked for that biotech wherein I started my blogging career. By telling me that I should have called Margaret back up and asked her out again, you would be denying yourselves this little slice o' the internet and all the shit good times we've had together.

If I had done all those things, I wouldn't be married to the woman I am now, with the two wonderful kids that we've had together and the happy, if humble, abode in which we dwell. Besides, if I had called her back and we had dated, fallen in love, and married, I wouldn't get to have the sex with a redhead with fabulously large breasts.

Unless, of course, she dyed her hair and got implants.

Crush with Eyeliner: Possibly the most amusing footnote to that whole story about me nearly puking on Margaret was that, I'm certain, my students would have gotten back to campus and asked her how things went. And, I'm certain, that Margaret told them that I puked and probably the other gory details. So, they would have heard about everything that happened that night.

Despite all this, Sheridan, the girl who lured me into tutoring her and her room mates, wanted to set me up with another one of her room mates. This girl's name was Kristine (if I remember correctly). She was tall, had red hair, and had a decent rack. Problem was, she wore a lot of eyeliner, so I wasn't really all that interested.

In a bit of an ironic twist, the night I met my wife, Kristine was there, too. They were working together on something for a campus charity. Apparently, Kristine was kind of interested in me (despite my pukiness on my date with Margaret), because she recognized me at the event and told her room mates that I was there. Much later, after I had married my wife, she saw me again and reported back to Sheridan et. al. that I was now wearing a ring, and what was up with that?

My question: you know I almost puked in your friend's face and still you wanted to date me? What was up with that?

What if We Give It Away?: My wife has found this site called Zazzle.com, and she fucking loves it.

The Lord of the Rings movies came out while we were still at Notre Dame, and we, of course, went to go and see all three of them in the theatres because we love us some Lord of the Rings. We also both love us some Notre Dame.

What do these two things have in common? Sean Astin. In case you need your memory jogged, Sean Astin was the titular Rudy in the movie of the same name. Naturally, this is a must watch for anyone who went to or is a fan of Notre Dame. In fact, in the old bookstore on campus, Rudy was on a continual 24-hour loop. That's a lot of Sean Astin and the dude who played Roc from the ill-fated Fox show from the early 90s (Charles S. Dutton, in case you care).

Astin, of course, also played Samwise Gamgee, Frodo's love interest friend and moral support as he carried the Ring to the fires of Mount Doom. Whenever the camera focused on Sam, especially during The Fellowship of the Ring and his little soliloquy at the end of The Two Towers, I would giggle and then say to my wife "I want to play football at Notre Dame, Mr. Frodo!"

Well, my wife took this happy little sentence and made herself a button over at Zazzle.com. It is, appropriately, cheesy. It is, also, a must-have for the mixed Notre Dame/LotR fan on your Christmas list.

Let Me In: When I was a freshman in college, I lived alone my first semester. There's a back story there that I don't want to get into (it involved me dressing like a garden gnome because ours was stolen...like I said, I don't want to get into it).

My friend, the Brewing Optometrist, decided to come and visit me once when he was home on break and I was still slogging away doing that learning bullshit. The joy of the Brewing Optometrist was that his dad worked for a beer distributorship, so he brought some booze for us to enjoy while watching Bevis and Butthead. He decided we needed some 40s, and what better drink to enjoy in a 40 ounce bottle than malt liquor?

Really, this story has no point. I just wanted to repost the picture of the OE Girl. If it helps, the Brewing Optometrist brought me a 40 of Olde English 800.

Yeah, that totally justifies it.

The Color Purple Violet

When I was a mere lad, spending my days in grammar elementary school, I had an art teacher who was a bit off. I mean, she was a nice enough lady, but I don't know if I learned anything of art from her. Most of the time, she gave us a bunch of projects to do, and then kind of tut-tutted about when we weren't creating works on the scale of Rembrandt. Except for this one kid, Ricky LaFollette, who was a phenomenal artist. He also kept getting caught jerking off in the bathrooms. Maybe that's the key to good art: constant masturbation.

Anyway, this isn't really about how often Ricky was pounding putz. No, this is about the one particular obsession my grade school art teacher had: the word purple. In fact, she would have been happy to stamp that word from the lexicon. Purple was the Jews to her Hitler. That might be a bit dramatic sounding, but she would actually dock your grade if she heard you say purple.

Her claim was that purple was not a word, that the shade should be called 'violet'. And she was ready to back her claims up with a half-grade drop, should one utter that profane word in her presence. Problem is, purple is most definitely a word. And...it's probably the right word.

Fat lot of good this does me twenty years later, but...

See, purple entered into the English language in the northern parts of England late in the 10th century. It's origin comes from the Latin word purpura, and evidently the word drifted north and was carried over by some of our Danish friends that we discussed on Friday. Words have a tendency to drift across the lands and change slightly as they do so, and even though Rome had fallen by the time purple shows up, Latin was still being spoken as a way of communicating back and forth with the various tribes and kingdoms that comprised the wilds of Europe in those days. When purple originally hit English, it came in as the Old English purpul. The shift from an /r/ to an /l/ is a common shift when words hop languages, or when people have been drinking too much malt liquor.

Violet, on the other hand, doesn't show up until the fourteenth century, and comes to us via Old French in the form of violette. This, in turn, is a diminutive form of the Latin word viola, meaning violet. The important thing here is that violet, in this sense, was in reference to the pretty little flower, the blue to rose's red. Once the word showed up, it was used to describe the color of the flower, and by the measure of it coming from the Old French, then it was used primarily by the aristocracy, who still spoke French in England following the Norman conquest in 1066. By this time, purple was firmly rooted with the common man.

To take this one step further, "purple" is used to describe the color and "violet" is used to describe the wavelength in the visible spectrum, you know, the old ROY G BIV acronym you were forced to learn at some point.

And, because it's Sunday, I looked up some synonyms of purple, trying to find a cool-looking shade. Amaranthine is a pretty cool sounding name, and it's apparently a deep shade of reddish-purple. It can also be used in the sense of eternal, unfading or everlasting. It is derived from the word amaranth, a type of flower, and comes originally from Greek amarantos, unwithering.

So, there you have it, Mrs. Chenoweth. I was perfectly fine in saying purple--especially when it was written on the crayon sleeve--and you were just being a nutty old fruitcake. However, she was a Purdue fan, so that probably explained a lot.