Once I noticed I was on fire, I decided to relax and enjoy the fall

Ezrael's Tales: Dawn of the Beasts

So this whole week has been sleepless, by and large, and even the sleep I get is of no use. I feel like ten miles of Route 95 in Rhode Island, which if you've never driven, is not a good ten mile stretch of road to feel like. There's a giant insect and a chrome dog and you can see a naked guy holding an anchor on the top of the State House and it's just awful, really, just knowing there are giant anthropomorphic tubers everywhere in the state. It's bad. Anyway, I decided to try and forget my current terror that the world is going to shake itself to pieces because humanity is by and large insane and catch a meal with my lovely Tara. We ended up eating at the local spaghetti place because whenever she asks me what I want to eat, I always respond food.

While we were there, we began discussing various strange ways we'd managed to injure ourselves. I discovered that if I ever wanted to make Tara bust out in painful-looking gut laughs, I only need to say "When I was five, I stepped on a shotglass in the bathroom." The runner-up was the story about the time I attempted to leap-frog an old parking meter with the head uncapped and managed to plant my genitalia in the void left behind by the lost meter like a human equivalent of one of those ball and cup games. Third place, however, went to the tale of the racoon army, and enough stories of nature in revolt seemed to take pride of place to warrant my telling a few of these stories here. It beats another pointless screed about nuclear proliferation, the Bush White House, the erosion of our once-cherished civil liberties, the appointment of convicted felons and alleged war criminals to high government office and so on.

I've already told the story of the day the buck decided to come into my bathroom while I was showering and drank out of the tub. So I'll skip that one and move to some of the others. First up, just because it was so damn weird, will be the mouse and the owl.

I think I was seven or eight at the time. That particular autumn, my uncle Timmy was renting one of the old houses on the farm and bumming around after getting out of college. He'd tear around on his dirtbike during the day, and go party at night with the local kids and the boat crowd...in short, he was having a good time and my dad was happy to take his money, so it was win-win for both of them. One night, however, my father and I were just finishing up chores when we heard a series of movie-quality howls and shrieks come from Timmy's house. Being both concerned and naturally voyeuristic (hey, there was nobody around for miles) we tore-assed our way towards the arc of spilled light coming out the open front door of the house.

Opening the screen door, we arrived to see Timmy rushing around the kitchen with a broom, swearing and barking out noises that sounded vaguely like hyena laughter while chasing after a mouse. Meanwhile, there were three women and a bottle of Crown Royal standing on top of the kitchen table, and two unkempt gentlemen and a device I later would recognize as an elaborate bong made out of a Mrs. Butterworth's bottle taking refuge in the kitchen sink.

The mouse, seeing the open path to freedom, made a run for the door. Before my father and I could either move out of its way or make a move to halt it, Timmy delivered a vicious slapshot with the broom that sent it hurtling right over my head, tumbling in the air...and as I turned to watch it fly past, I saw a blur and realized that at the very edge of the ring of light thrown by the kitchen, an owl had swooped down and caught the mouse in mid air. We all stared at the enormous span of its wings as it circled lazily up into the dark, and then my dad made up some lame excuse for how late it was to get me away from the booze and pot before I figured it out. In case you were wondering, it took me at least ten years to piece all the clues together.

I will now continue with the tale of the onslaught of the raccoon army.

In order to dispose of our garbage, we either composted it, fed it to pigs, or left in in a side lot next to the house in order that we might load it onto a truck and take it to the dump, which was really just a hole in the ground. One week we'd managed to create quite the pile of trash and garbage next to the house, a pile that sent the smell of rot out and called them in.

You've got to understand, there weren't just a couple of cute little raccoons coming out to knock over some trash cans. These were big raccoons, the smallest easily weighing in at 30 pounds, and there were twelve or thirteen of them. They came up on our garbage like it was manna from heaven, knocking over cans, tearing open bags, even tipping over the compost bin and rooting around. We watched, stunned, from inside the living room until my father got the bright idea of going outside and scaring them off by yelling.

They rushed the house.

I can't really relate the experience of sitting there as raccoons flung themselves repeatedly at the doors and the windows, trying to break through the glass and get into the house...or the sight of a raccoon so hurling itself forward only to explode in a shower of viscera and a spray of blood as my father opened fire on them from the second floor. Three or four of them literally burst apart like rotten pumpkins on the business end of a baseball bat while my mom and I stood there, absolutely gobsmacked. The sound of gunfire went on for a full minute after the raccoons were nowhere to be seen...my father was, and is, a very enthusiastic person when he begins a task. I spent several hours that night shoveling trash, garbage and raccoon parts into new bags and tossing those bags into the back of the dump truck while my father stood guard with a shotgun, wondering if I'd somehow stumbled into some post-apocalyptic world where raccoons and humans did battle for the spoils of a once-proud and now ruined civilization. Thank God our nearest neighbors were miles away, ultimately...as it is, I'm sure several of the boats in the cove our farm overlooked pulled up anchor and got the hell out of there as the shooting started. I wonder to this day what they must have thought was going on.

Finally we have the morning of the rabbits and the spectacular kicking of Toby's ass.

One morning, I was finishing up my daily chores and saw a rabbit near the back of our house. Now, thinking nothing more than that this was a cute little rabbit, I decided to dig through our crisper and toss it some less-than-fresh old carrot both to get rid of it and to make the rabbit's day. I did, he seemed happy with his catch, and we both went about our day.

The next morning, I got out of bed with my dad, cleaned up, got dressed and prepared to go out. We stopped dead in our tracks at the back door. Because there were over fifty rabbits on our deck.

After confessing my decision to feed one the previous day, we stood there, not really knowing what to do. My mom was of the impression that we should propitiate them with the slowly spoiling lettuce, carrots and such from the fridge, whereas my dad was dead set against feeding them and encouraging them to continue this kind of behavior. Before a decision could be reached, however, an open window in my parent's room led to a whole new situation. One of our cats, Toby, had gotten wind of this sudden explosion in the vagrant rabbit population and as we watched, stunned, he leapt yowling out of the window and landed among the rabbits.

Who then kicked the crap out of him. I don't think they did it deliberately, but fifty-some odd rabbits stampeding can deliver some stunning incidental kicks to the side of a cat's head. Before he had time to do more than get purchase on the deck, he was rocking and reeling, a tabby splash of color in the midst of frenzied white and black and grey. I remember thinking about going out to save him, but my brain didn't seem to be able to get my body to move even remotely fast enough, and my parents were stunned, my mom holding a bag of carrot sticks that had gone a little mushy while my dad simply gaped. When they'd finally hauled ass, all that was left on the patio was a stunned cat on his back with some incredibly messed up fur and a look on his face that to this day I swear said Holy Shit, who the fuck taught those rabbits kung fu?

So yeah. These are a few of the stories of animals I have witnessed in my life. I'll post some other stuff tomorrow.

Ezrael's Tales: Dawn of the Beasts

So this whole week has been sleepless, by and large, and even the sleep I get is of no use. I feel like ten miles of Route 95 in Rhode Island, which if you've never driven, is not a good ten mile stretch of road to feel like. There's a giant insect and a chrome dog and you can see a naked guy holding an anchor on the top of the State House and it's just awful, really, just knowing there are giant anthropomorphic tubers everywhere in the state. It's bad. Anyway, I decided to try and forget my current terror that the world is going to shake itself to pieces because humanity is by and large insane and catch a meal with my lovely Tara. We ended up eating at the local spaghetti place because whenever she asks me what I want to eat, I always respond food.

While we were there, we began discussing various strange ways we'd managed to injure ourselves. I discovered that if I ever wanted to make Tara bust out in painful-looking gut laughs, I only need to say "When I was five, I stepped on a shotglass in the bathroom." The runner-up was the story about the time I attempted to leap-frog an old parking meter with the head uncapped and managed to plant my genitalia in the void left behind by the lost meter like a human equivalent of one of those ball and cup games. Third place, however, went to the tale of the racoon army, and enough stories of nature in revolt seemed to take pride of place to warrant my telling a few of these stories here. It beats another pointless screed about nuclear proliferation, the Bush White House, the erosion of our once-cherished civil liberties, the appointment of convicted felons and alleged war criminals to high government office and so on.

I've already told the story of the day the buck decided to come into my bathroom while I was showering and drank out of the tub. So I'll skip that one and move to some of the others. First up, just because it was so damn weird, will be the mouse and the owl.

I think I was seven or eight at the time. That particular autumn, my uncle Timmy was renting one of the old houses on the farm and bumming around after getting out of college. He'd tear around on his dirtbike during the day, and go party at night with the local kids and the boat crowd...in short, he was having a good time and my dad was happy to take his money, so it was win-win for both of them. One night, however, my father and I were just finishing up chores when we heard a series of movie-quality howls and shrieks come from Timmy's house. Being both concerned and naturally voyeuristic (hey, there was nobody around for miles) we tore-assed our way towards the arc of spilled light coming out the open front door of the house.

Opening the screen door, we arrived to see Timmy rushing around the kitchen with a broom, swearing and barking out noises that sounded vaguely like hyena laughter while chasing after a mouse. Meanwhile, there were three women and a bottle of Crown Royal standing on top of the kitchen table, and two unkempt gentlemen and a device I later would recognize as an elaborate bong made out of a Mrs. Butterworth's bottle taking refuge in the kitchen sink.

The mouse, seeing the open path to freedom, made a run for the door. Before my father and I could either move out of its way or make a move to halt it, Timmy delivered a vicious slapshot with the broom that sent it hurtling right over my head, tumbling in the air...and as I turned to watch it fly past, I saw a blur and realized that at the very edge of the ring of light thrown by the kitchen, an owl had swooped down and caught the mouse in mid air. We all stared at the enormous span of its wings as it circled lazily up into the dark, and then my dad made up some lame excuse for how late it was to get me away from the booze and pot before I figured it out. In case you were wondering, it took me at least ten years to piece all the clues together.

I will now continue with the tale of the onslaught of the raccoon army.

In order to dispose of our garbage, we either composted it, fed it to pigs, or left in in a side lot next to the house in order that we might load it onto a truck and take it to the dump, which was really just a hole in the ground. One week we'd managed to create quite the pile of trash and garbage next to the house, a pile that sent the smell of rot out and called them in.

You've got to understand, there weren't just a couple of cute little raccoons coming out to knock over some trash cans. These were big raccoons, the smallest easily weighing in at 30 pounds, and there were twelve or thirteen of them. They came up on our garbage like it was manna from heaven, knocking over cans, tearing open bags, even tipping over the compost bin and rooting around. We watched, stunned, from inside the living room until my father got the bright idea of going outside and scaring them off by yelling.

They rushed the house.

I can't really relate the experience of sitting there as raccoons flung themselves repeatedly at the doors and the windows, trying to break through the glass and get into the house...or the sight of a raccoon so hurling itself forward only to explode in a shower of viscera and a spray of blood as my father opened fire on them from the second floor. Three or four of them literally burst apart like rotten pumpkins on the business end of a baseball bat while my mom and I stood there, absolutely gobsmacked. The sound of gunfire went on for a full minute after the raccoons were nowhere to be seen...my father was, and is, a very enthusiastic person when he begins a task. I spent several hours that night shoveling trash, garbage and raccoon parts into new bags and tossing those bags into the back of the dump truck while my father stood guard with a shotgun, wondering if I'd somehow stumbled into some post-apocalyptic world where raccoons and humans did battle for the spoils of a once-proud and now ruined civilization. Thank God our nearest neighbors were miles away, ultimately...as it is, I'm sure several of the boats in the cove our farm overlooked pulled up anchor and got the hell out of there as the shooting started. I wonder to this day what they must have thought was going on.

Finally we have the morning of the rabbits and the spectacular kicking of Toby's ass.

One morning, I was finishing up my daily chores and saw a rabbit near the back of our house. Now, thinking nothing more than that this was a cute little rabbit, I decided to dig through our crisper and toss it some less-than-fresh old carrot both to get rid of it and to make the rabbit's day. I did, he seemed happy with his catch, and we both went about our day.

The next morning, I got out of bed with my dad, cleaned up, got dressed and prepared to go out. We stopped dead in our tracks at the back door. Because there were over fifty rabbits on our deck.

After confessing my decision to feed one the previous day, we stood there, not really knowing what to do. My mom was of the impression that we should propitiate them with the slowly spoiling lettuce, carrots and such from the fridge, whereas my dad was dead set against feeding them and encouraging them to continue this kind of behavior. Before a decision could be reached, however, an open window in my parent's room led to a whole new situation. One of our cats, Toby, had gotten wind of this sudden explosion in the vagrant rabbit population and as we watched, stunned, he leapt yowling out of the window and landed among the rabbits.

Who then kicked the crap out of him. I don't think they did it deliberately, but fifty-some odd rabbits stampeding can deliver some stunning incidental kicks to the side of a cat's head. Before he had time to do more than get purchase on the deck, he was rocking and reeling, a tabby splash of color in the midst of frenzied white and black and grey. I remember thinking about going out to save him, but my brain didn't seem to be able to get my body to move even remotely fast enough, and my parents were stunned, my mom holding a bag of carrot sticks that had gone a little mushy while my dad simply gaped. When they'd finally hauled ass, all that was left on the patio was a stunned cat on his back with some incredibly messed up fur and a look on his face that to this day I swear said Holy Shit, who the fuck taught those rabbits kung fu?

So yeah. These are a few of the stories of animals I have witnessed in my life. I'll post some other stuff tomorrow.

Ezrael's Tales: Billy and Matt go out into the woods with two bows, several hundred arrows, a fire axe and a mission to kill rats. (Alternate Title - Why the Hell am I not dead?)

If you're familiar with the old Ezrael's Tales series I used to do, it's basically an excuse to share odd, humiliating or just damn stupid experiences from my life. A conversation with Xkot ended up triggering some of these memories, specifically his recent post about the movie theatre with the rat problem.

For I was a fearless slayer of rats in my youth.

At an age where kids today would be playing games about hijacking cars, my cousin Billy (always available when something monstrously stupid was about to be engaged in) and I would gather up a couple of old bows and arrows from one of the attics on the farm (which used to be a Boy's Town, and so had a copious supply of all sorts of dangerous things like clubs, bows and arrows, fencing foils...it was Heaven, Nirvana and Valhalla all in one for two kids who liked to pretend to be vikings and beat the crap out of each other with axe handles) and get the fireman's axe from the garage. We'd strap on the quivers, fill them with arrows, throw on the old catcher's padding or football pads from kid's games of the long-distant past (well, to us, anyway...fifteen years is ancient history when you're not even that old) gas up our dirtbikes and ride off into the woods in search of rats. The woods seemed to teem with them...they would find their way into every building on the farm, and we in our zeal figured they had to be coming from somewhere.

Often, this would require us to go into one of the several (there were at least five) collapsed barns or abandoned buildings on the property. Our favorite hunting ground was the old Stone Houses on the edge of the farm...there had been three of them until one had collapsed in on itself, and the other two were in fair states of decomposition as well. They shared an extensive underground tunnel system originally designed when they were a kind of hunting lodge for my grandfather's rich friends...staff would cross back and forth underneath the buildings so as to avoid being exposed to the winter. Winter was pretty harsh on the island. After the houses were abandoned and the central building collapsed, the underground became rat heaven.

Being that Billy was a better shot with a bow than I was, I tended to be the frontman. I had the axe, after all. I wasn't any bigger than Billy, but even then I tended to have more frustration to work out and I was better with the axe than he ever would be. We'd rush in, barely able to see through the cracks leading down from the vine-choked ruin of the floors above our heads, Billy firing wildly with the bow while I hacked at anything furry that came squealing out of the dark at me.

I have no idea why I managed to only get shot with an arrow once in my life, and it wasn't even Billy who shot me. We once tried to wrap oily rags around the arrows and light them on fire, but we only managed to burn ourselves and set some old rotten wood alight...which then nearly suffocated us and caused a plume of smoke to ascend from the crater of the old house up as though calling my father to punish us. At least we thought he would. Instead, he merely informed us to not use fire anymore and showed us how to tape flashlights to our motorcycle helmets.

My dad was a lot of things, but never let it be said that he didn't encourage the slaughter of rats. There's an aside there I'll share later...I may have posted it before, so I'll tack it on here at the end.

The rat slaughter continued for three years. After that, we were more interested in stealing beer and trying to impress women...I think we were sixteen or so when we went on the last rat hunt, just around the time of my growth spurt, and I have to say it was an impressive affair. Compound bows, chain mail, hunting arrows, the fire axe cleaned and honed, new flashlights taped to our helmets...we went to every half-intact structure within reach and killed rats until we could kill no more. Well, okay, many escaped us. There were, after all, a lot of rats.

Other parents worry that their kids might see violence on TV. Mine were letting me do this as a hobby. Well, my dad, anyway. My mom would have gone existential on us and shat herself. So we tended to wait until mom had to go to work to do these things. Once Billy and I stopped, my dad ended up letting the Great Danes take over...they were probably better at it anyway.

It's really amazing I'm not dead.

Anyway, as a capper, I'll share the story of my father and the rat. After my mom and dad split up (not because of the rat hunts) my dad used to insist that I come with him to spend weekends on the island. I didn't want to, but I didn't have a lot of choice. Anyway, one night I heard this loud clap of what I took to be thunder and then a pealing, bell-ringing whang sound coming from the kitchen and so I went downstairs to see what it was.

What it was turned out to be my father sitting at the kitchen table in a pair of tighty-whiteys and nothing else, as furry as a bear that's been rolling in sasquatch leavings, holding a half-empty bottle of Seagrams in one hand and a Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum in the other. On the gas stove was an old cast iron skillet, a thankfully thick one. In that skillet lay the mortal remains of a rat that my father had blown into a dadaist mass of organs and fur from the table. Yes, my father fired a handgun at a rat on top of a gas stove. Only the cast iron skillet had saved us from being blown up, and it had a dent in it that suggested it had saved us by the barest of margins.

As you can imagine, I took this all in, turned around, and went back up to bed, not wanting to even try and understand how close I had just come to death. Yeah, it's amazing I am not dead.

Aside: just in case you think I'm making up how weird RI really is, Kneel before the fury of the Potato god!

Ezrael's Tales: Billy and Matt go out into the woods with two bows, several hundred arrows, a fire axe and a mission to kill rats. (Alternate Title - Why the Hell am I not dead?)

If you're familiar with the old Ezrael's Tales series I used to do, it's basically an excuse to share odd, humiliating or just damn stupid experiences from my life. A conversation with Xkot ended up triggering some of these memories, specifically his recent post about the movie theatre with the rat problem.

For I was a fearless slayer of rats in my youth.

At an age where kids today would be playing games about hijacking cars, my cousin Billy (always available when something monstrously stupid was about to be engaged in) and I would gather up a couple of old bows and arrows from one of the attics on the farm (which used to be a Boy's Town, and so had a copious supply of all sorts of dangerous things like clubs, bows and arrows, fencing foils...it was Heaven, Nirvana and Valhalla all in one for two kids who liked to pretend to be vikings and beat the crap out of each other with axe handles) and get the fireman's axe from the garage. We'd strap on the quivers, fill them with arrows, throw on the old catcher's padding or football pads from kid's games of the long-distant past (well, to us, anyway...fifteen years is ancient history when you're not even that old) gas up our dirtbikes and ride off into the woods in search of rats. The woods seemed to teem with them...they would find their way into every building on the farm, and we in our zeal figured they had to be coming from somewhere.

Often, this would require us to go into one of the several (there were at least five) collapsed barns or abandoned buildings on the property. Our favorite hunting ground was the old Stone Houses on the edge of the farm...there had been three of them until one had collapsed in on itself, and the other two were in fair states of decomposition as well. They shared an extensive underground tunnel system originally designed when they were a kind of hunting lodge for my grandfather's rich friends...staff would cross back and forth underneath the buildings so as to avoid being exposed to the winter. Winter was pretty harsh on the island. After the houses were abandoned and the central building collapsed, the underground became rat heaven.

Being that Billy was a better shot with a bow than I was, I tended to be the frontman. I had the axe, after all. I wasn't any bigger than Billy, but even then I tended to have more frustration to work out and I was better with the axe than he ever would be. We'd rush in, barely able to see through the cracks leading down from the vine-choked ruin of the floors above our heads, Billy firing wildly with the bow while I hacked at anything furry that came squealing out of the dark at me.

I have no idea why I managed to only get shot with an arrow once in my life, and it wasn't even Billy who shot me. We once tried to wrap oily rags around the arrows and light them on fire, but we only managed to burn ourselves and set some old rotten wood alight...which then nearly suffocated us and caused a plume of smoke to ascend from the crater of the old house up as though calling my father to punish us. At least we thought he would. Instead, he merely informed us to not use fire anymore and showed us how to tape flashlights to our motorcycle helmets.

My dad was a lot of things, but never let it be said that he didn't encourage the slaughter of rats. There's an aside there I'll share later...I may have posted it before, so I'll tack it on here at the end.

The rat slaughter continued for three years. After that, we were more interested in stealing beer and trying to impress women...I think we were sixteen or so when we went on the last rat hunt, just around the time of my growth spurt, and I have to say it was an impressive affair. Compound bows, chain mail, hunting arrows, the fire axe cleaned and honed, new flashlights taped to our helmets...we went to every half-intact structure within reach and killed rats until we could kill no more. Well, okay, many escaped us. There were, after all, a lot of rats.

Other parents worry that their kids might see violence on TV. Mine were letting me do this as a hobby. Well, my dad, anyway. My mom would have gone existential on us and shat herself. So we tended to wait until mom had to go to work to do these things. Once Billy and I stopped, my dad ended up letting the Great Danes take over...they were probably better at it anyway.

It's really amazing I'm not dead.

Anyway, as a capper, I'll share the story of my father and the rat. After my mom and dad split up (not because of the rat hunts) my dad used to insist that I come with him to spend weekends on the island. I didn't want to, but I didn't have a lot of choice. Anyway, one night I heard this loud clap of what I took to be thunder and then a pealing, bell-ringing whang sound coming from the kitchen and so I went downstairs to see what it was.

What it was turned out to be my father sitting at the kitchen table in a pair of tighty-whiteys and nothing else, as furry as a bear that's been rolling in sasquatch leavings, holding a half-empty bottle of Seagrams in one hand and a Ruger Super Blackhawk .44 Magnum in the other. On the gas stove was an old cast iron skillet, a thankfully thick one. In that skillet lay the mortal remains of a rat that my father had blown into a dadaist mass of organs and fur from the table. Yes, my father fired a handgun at a rat on top of a gas stove. Only the cast iron skillet had saved us from being blown up, and it had a dent in it that suggested it had saved us by the barest of margins.

As you can imagine, I took this all in, turned around, and went back up to bed, not wanting to even try and understand how close I had just come to death. Yeah, it's amazing I am not dead.

Aside: just in case you think I'm making up how weird RI really is, Kneel before the fury of the Potato god!

If I felt like embarrasing myself, I'd tell you...

My first week in the San Francisco bay area, I got lost in SF while wandering around. Eventually, I needed to urinate, it was dark and I had no idea where I was, so I stopped and relieved myself against a building. Later, the first night I met Tara, she took me for a drive around the city, and at one point we drove past a familiar building.
"That's the Blogger building. Well, the former one. I stuffed envelopes there once when Ev asked for volunteers."
All I could see was the huge, deformed troll looking stain from where I'd relieved myself. It looked like a scarlet pee, gleaming in the night, saying to all the world this is where the weblogger pissed on me. Yes, I pissed on the site that so often pissed on me. I don't mean to sound ungrateful...I mean, if not for blogger, I wouldn't have this site now...but for every lost post, or delayed entry due to server issues, that unknowing release seems tinged in my memory with mingled loathing and regret, equally disloyal and triumphant.

My hair is currently so long and such an odd color (due to a bleaching and blue coloring last year that has grown out, leaving me with six inches of black and brown roots, a smattering of almost entirely transparent hairs like Xkot mentioned, and yellow and green intermittent strands trailing down my back) that I now look like David Coverdale got it on with the Swamp Thing. Yes, if you could imagine a muck-encrusted mockery of a man (was that the Man-Thing? Eh, whatever) who likes to belt out bad Led Zeppelin rip-off songs, that might be a good approximation of me. Except that Tawny Kitaen does nothing for me, I think Whitesnake sucked the phalluses of many a packmule, and I don't talk to trees. Well, not that often, anyway. Okay, so I once got busted at school talking to a pine tree, but he wasn't talking back. Much.

Speaking of my hair, the first time I tried to color my hair, a friend convinced me to let him do it. He swore up and down that he knew what he was doing. So I let him bleach and then color my hair with several hues he had left over rather than doing it myself...and he turned my hair pink. Not a good pink, either. I looked like I'd somehow managed to work a bottle of Pepto Bismol into my follicles. Someone actually told me I looked like the love child of Liberace and Rip Taylor. So I shaved my head...only to discover that the hair dye had permeated my scalp. So yes, I looked like an easter q-tip. A human lipstick. I'll never forget showing up to see a movie (Starship Troopers, to add insult to injury) and having children pointing at my head and laughing. Then again, thankfully the movie was gory and scared them enough that I could laugh at their parents for bringing them.

I threw up all over the Priest at my first communion. The Bishop was there. He laughed so hard he hit his head on the pew and just kept on laughing.

Once, while I was sleeping, I managed to get out of bed and walk out of my house (I was living on the island at the time...I was about nineteen at the time) and didn't wake up until I slipped and began falling end over end down a sandy hill and into the bay. The first coherent thought I had was that those phosphorescent algae that lit up around me were really pretty, and the second I had was that a jellyfish was exploring my exposed genitalia a bit closer than I would have liked. Yes, I slept naked. So I walked roughly an acre, while asleep, up and then down a hill and onto the beach starkers. Luckily, there was no one there except for the thirty or so boats full of drunken revelers partying in the cove. And the people on the beach having a bonfire. And my father and all his friends. So it wasn't too embarrasing. Luckily, someone gave me a pair of shorts and I stuck around and drank myself sick right in front of my dad, who by this time wasn't bigger than I anymore (and who probably was in the mood to cut me some slack after all that anyway).

I once mistook Metamucil for Tang. Yes, exactly one. I was twelve, I think. Believe me, you don't make that mistake twice. I was out in the backyard and I suddenly had to hide behind the pool and leave what my grandmother took to be dog accidents in every secluded spot. They were huge and angry bowel movements, and I was single-handedly responsible for that poor beagle being forced to endure the indignities of a rectal exam because my grandmother thought she was dying. No healthy dog could poop so much. That one's as big as she is! I don't think that dog ever forgave me, either. Oh, of course she knew.

There are more. Many, many more.

If I felt like embarrasing myself, I'd tell you...

My first week in the San Francisco bay area, I got lost in SF while wandering around. Eventually, I needed to urinate, it was dark and I had no idea where I was, so I stopped and relieved myself against a building. Later, the first night I met Tara, she took me for a drive around the city, and at one point we drove past a familiar building.
"That's the Blogger building. Well, the former one. I stuffed envelopes there once when Ev asked for volunteers."
All I could see was the huge, deformed troll looking stain from where I'd relieved myself. It looked like a scarlet pee, gleaming in the night, saying to all the world this is where the weblogger pissed on me. Yes, I pissed on the site that so often pissed on me. I don't mean to sound ungrateful...I mean, if not for blogger, I wouldn't have this site now...but for every lost post, or delayed entry due to server issues, that unknowing release seems tinged in my memory with mingled loathing and regret, equally disloyal and triumphant.

My hair is currently so long and such an odd color (due to a bleaching and blue coloring last year that has grown out, leaving me with six inches of black and brown roots, a smattering of almost entirely transparent hairs like Xkot mentioned, and yellow and green intermittent strands trailing down my back) that I now look like David Coverdale got it on with the Swamp Thing. Yes, if you could imagine a muck-encrusted mockery of a man (was that the Man-Thing? Eh, whatever) who likes to belt out bad Led Zeppelin rip-off songs, that might be a good approximation of me. Except that Tawny Kitaen does nothing for me, I think Whitesnake sucked the phalluses of many a packmule, and I don't talk to trees. Well, not that often, anyway. Okay, so I once got busted at school talking to a pine tree, but he wasn't talking back. Much.

Speaking of my hair, the first time I tried to color my hair, a friend convinced me to let him do it. He swore up and down that he knew what he was doing. So I let him bleach and then color my hair with several hues he had left over rather than doing it myself...and he turned my hair pink. Not a good pink, either. I looked like I'd somehow managed to work a bottle of Pepto Bismol into my follicles. Someone actually told me I looked like the love child of Liberace and Rip Taylor. So I shaved my head...only to discover that the hair dye had permeated my scalp. So yes, I looked like an easter q-tip. A human lipstick. I'll never forget showing up to see a movie (Starship Troopers, to add insult to injury) and having children pointing at my head and laughing. Then again, thankfully the movie was gory and scared them enough that I could laugh at their parents for bringing them.

I threw up all over the Priest at my first communion. The Bishop was there. He laughed so hard he hit his head on the pew and just kept on laughing.

Once, while I was sleeping, I managed to get out of bed and walk out of my house (I was living on the island at the time...I was about nineteen at the time) and didn't wake up until I slipped and began falling end over end down a sandy hill and into the bay. The first coherent thought I had was that those phosphorescent algae that lit up around me were really pretty, and the second I had was that a jellyfish was exploring my exposed genitalia a bit closer than I would have liked. Yes, I slept naked. So I walked roughly an acre, while asleep, up and then down a hill and onto the beach starkers. Luckily, there was no one there except for the thirty or so boats full of drunken revelers partying in the cove. And the people on the beach having a bonfire. And my father and all his friends. So it wasn't too embarrasing. Luckily, someone gave me a pair of shorts and I stuck around and drank myself sick right in front of my dad, who by this time wasn't bigger than I anymore (and who probably was in the mood to cut me some slack after all that anyway).

I once mistook Metamucil for Tang. Yes, exactly one. I was twelve, I think. Believe me, you don't make that mistake twice. I was out in the backyard and I suddenly had to hide behind the pool and leave what my grandmother took to be dog accidents in every secluded spot. They were huge and angry bowel movements, and I was single-handedly responsible for that poor beagle being forced to endure the indignities of a rectal exam because my grandmother thought she was dying. No healthy dog could poop so much. That one's as big as she is! I don't think that dog ever forgave me, either. Oh, of course she knew.

There are more. Many, many more.

The return of the son of that guy who used to know the barber who cut the hair of the ex-girlfriend of the therapist of Ezrael's Tales

Just put most of my books in the bookcase and so, flush with that semi-triumph over the Golden Dawn, Charles Panati, Israel Regardie, way more RPG's than a grown man should have and dozens upon dozens more, I figured I could regale myself with yet another installment of that popular feature wherein I relate deranged shit I've either experienced, witnessed or perpetrated. Head over to the archive for the original installments.

I could relate the day I took a ride home from the Worcester area of Massachusetts with a friend of a friend and, instead of taking me to Rhode Island (which is where I lived at the time) he got on the highway while I slept and made excellent time to Deleware. Or when I returned from London only to find that my ex-landlord had rented my apartment to Mormons on a mission...and the postal service had failed to forward my mail as I requested...and that the mormons were reading it. There's nothing like going back to an old apartment (which my ex-landlord had assured me would be a fine place to store some of my things while I was gone) to find a pack of missionaries who know a lot more about your sexual activities than is really comfortable. I think they played my bass while I was gone, too.

The problem is, a lot of these stories kind of hurt to remember, even when they're kind of demented and amusing. Like the day I was trying to walk to class from my apartment in Bristol, but having no money at the time (I was broke a lot in college, since I didn't get financial aid or any help from any relatives and the jobs I worked barely covered my rent, never mind my tuition) and I basically passed out on the road to school. A cop pulled over while I was leaning against a stone wall, trying to catch my breath, and in the process of hassling me about vagrancy accidentally asked me what I thought I was doing. Suddenly, the whole two years of kicking myself in the balls repeatedly while trying to graduate, working pathetic little jobs for no money, begging from my advisior in order to eat certain weeks, wondering why I was even bothering when what I wanted to study had zero application to the real world...it all came spilling out while he stood there, aghast. (I should point out that this was the same police department that came to my apartment one night after I'd gotten drunk the week before and mailed a suicide letter to a friend of mine.) Finally, he took five dollars out of his wallet, forced it into my hand, and drove me to the school so that I could get something to eat and get to class.

It's kind of funny, and yet it isn't. I mean, how do you make sense of the world, with all these variables? People can be giving you shit one second and helping you out the next. My whole time living in Washington DC was like that. I don't know. I guess I'm not really in a funny mood, but I want to try and say something and I have no idea what it is. Something about how people are people even when they're acting out whatever roles they have in society, and how we should spend less time assuming that the individual member of any particular group or class is like the sterotype of such groups we may have heard, whether it be a grubby college student leaning on a wall or a cop stopping to find out why.

If, however, you're looking for one of my more usual stories, I can tell you about one of the jobs I worked during that period, as a produce clerk at Almacs (it was a chain unique to Rhode Island at the time, closing not too much after I stopped working there), the special 24 hour superstore in Garden City. (That was in Cranston, near where I went to high school, on the off chance you're from or in RI) While working this job, I had many a fantabulous experience...there was the gang of four elderly ladies who kept trying to just walk into the store, pick up various vegetables, and then walk out with them. When I tried to stop them gently, they would babble in italian and strike me with their ill-gotten grapes. Then there was the day that one man spent the entire day...he was there when I left, and when I came back the next day, he was still there, in the same outfit, still looking at the pumpkins as if they contained the hidden knowledge of lost Lemuria. I mentioned this to my boss, who then attempted to ask the man if he was loitering, only to then experience the simulated coitus attack of ten lifetimes. I'd never seen one man knock down and hump another man until that day, and I've never seen anyone do it with that kind of fervor since. (I did see a Greyhound bus driver get knocked down and humped in St. Louis, but unlike my old boss, he didn't have the only one who could have helped him leaning against a pole and gut laughing so hard that people came over from the deli to see what was going on...and of course, they couldn't stop laughing, either, while Dave's shrill shrieks reverberated among the melons and the squash. We did help him, eventually. I don't think he ever forgave us.)

And then there was the day of horror, that I think I've probably already mentioned...the day I came in to work, went out to check the area before deciding what to toss in the trash and what to restock, and found a watermelon that had been smashed in. When I looked at the watermelon, I saw the soiled condom inside it that made the picture all too horribly clear. I think I may have told that story before, so I'll just leave it at that.

The return of the son of that guy who used to know the barber who cut the hair of the ex-girlfriend of the therapist of Ezrael's Tales

Just put most of my books in the bookcase and so, flush with that semi-triumph over the Golden Dawn, Charles Panati, Israel Regardie, way more RPG's than a grown man should have and dozens upon dozens more, I figured I could regale myself with yet another installment of that popular feature wherein I relate deranged shit I've either experienced, witnessed or perpetrated. Head over to the archive for the original installments.

I could relate the day I took a ride home from the Worcester area of Massachusetts with a friend of a friend and, instead of taking me to Rhode Island (which is where I lived at the time) he got on the highway while I slept and made excellent time to Deleware. Or when I returned from London only to find that my ex-landlord had rented my apartment to Mormons on a mission...and the postal service had failed to forward my mail as I requested...and that the mormons were reading it. There's nothing like going back to an old apartment (which my ex-landlord had assured me would be a fine place to store some of my things while I was gone) to find a pack of missionaries who know a lot more about your sexual activities than is really comfortable. I think they played my bass while I was gone, too.

The problem is, a lot of these stories kind of hurt to remember, even when they're kind of demented and amusing. Like the day I was trying to walk to class from my apartment in Bristol, but having no money at the time (I was broke a lot in college, since I didn't get financial aid or any help from any relatives and the jobs I worked barely covered my rent, never mind my tuition) and I basically passed out on the road to school. A cop pulled over while I was leaning against a stone wall, trying to catch my breath, and in the process of hassling me about vagrancy accidentally asked me what I thought I was doing. Suddenly, the whole two years of kicking myself in the balls repeatedly while trying to graduate, working pathetic little jobs for no money, begging from my advisior in order to eat certain weeks, wondering why I was even bothering when what I wanted to study had zero application to the real world...it all came spilling out while he stood there, aghast. (I should point out that this was the same police department that came to my apartment one night after I'd gotten drunk the week before and mailed a suicide letter to a friend of mine.) Finally, he took five dollars out of his wallet, forced it into my hand, and drove me to the school so that I could get something to eat and get to class.

It's kind of funny, and yet it isn't. I mean, how do you make sense of the world, with all these variables? People can be giving you shit one second and helping you out the next. My whole time living in Washington DC was like that. I don't know. I guess I'm not really in a funny mood, but I want to try and say something and I have no idea what it is. Something about how people are people even when they're acting out whatever roles they have in society, and how we should spend less time assuming that the individual member of any particular group or class is like the sterotype of such groups we may have heard, whether it be a grubby college student leaning on a wall or a cop stopping to find out why.

If, however, you're looking for one of my more usual stories, I can tell you about one of the jobs I worked during that period, as a produce clerk at Almacs (it was a chain unique to Rhode Island at the time, closing not too much after I stopped working there), the special 24 hour superstore in Garden City. (That was in Cranston, near where I went to high school, on the off chance you're from or in RI) While working this job, I had many a fantabulous experience...there was the gang of four elderly ladies who kept trying to just walk into the store, pick up various vegetables, and then walk out with them. When I tried to stop them gently, they would babble in italian and strike me with their ill-gotten grapes. Then there was the day that one man spent the entire day...he was there when I left, and when I came back the next day, he was still there, in the same outfit, still looking at the pumpkins as if they contained the hidden knowledge of lost Lemuria. I mentioned this to my boss, who then attempted to ask the man if he was loitering, only to then experience the simulated coitus attack of ten lifetimes. I'd never seen one man knock down and hump another man until that day, and I've never seen anyone do it with that kind of fervor since. (I did see a Greyhound bus driver get knocked down and humped in St. Louis, but unlike my old boss, he didn't have the only one who could have helped him leaning against a pole and gut laughing so hard that people came over from the deli to see what was going on...and of course, they couldn't stop laughing, either, while Dave's shrill shrieks reverberated among the melons and the squash. We did help him, eventually. I don't think he ever forgave us.)

And then there was the day of horror, that I think I've probably already mentioned...the day I came in to work, went out to check the area before deciding what to toss in the trash and what to restock, and found a watermelon that had been smashed in. When I looked at the watermelon, I saw the soiled condom inside it that made the picture all too horribly clear. I think I may have told that story before, so I'll just leave it at that.

Ezrael's Tales III: Elevated trains or subway systems are not good places to attempt to rob me

Still working on the Tunguska entry...at this rate, it's looking like I might do a similar essay to the one I wrote about Henry V of England, with four or five possibilities each getting their own mini-essay within the main body of the entry. Or I might just toss it all in the hopper, who knows? Anyway, while I was working on it, I decided to give y'all another installment of the ever popular (with me, anyway, because I don't have to do any research) Ezrael's Tales, because while I'm not capable of doing a list of a hundred things you may not know about me, I can at least tell you a few at a time.

The first one comes from my time in Chicago. To make a long story short, I was very much in love with a woman, who then fell out of love with me, for what I'm sure were very good reasons (I have no idea what they were, since she never told me, but I do honestly believe she had them) and so, to get over it, I moved in with an old ex-boyfriend of hers in Chicago. No, I suppose it doesn't make any sense. Anyway, while living with him, I often would spend my days wandering around the Chicago area moping. One day, I was riding the elevated train between Evanston and Chicago, and I was on the platform waiting for another train to show up (Based on this map, I suspect it was either Howard or South Blvd, but it might have been Dempster...there was a Dominick's across the street, which features into the story later) when this young guy, maybe eighteen, with long greasy blond hair and a demeanor just this side of crystal meth addicted ferret walked up to me. His waist looked to be about the same size as my thighs, and he maybe came up to my collarbone, so I was surprised that he'd walk right up.

He then cleared his throat. I turned to regard him at the strained sound of his wheezy breathing and looked rather critically at his ragged leather jacket (especially since my jacket at the time was a rather aggressively decorated, spike encrusted monster of a jacket and his was really pathetic) and his trembling. I think it was the trembling that most affected me, even as he drew an old, rusty switchblade from his back pants pocket.

"What do you think you're doing?" I barked in my best dad voice. I often say a lot of things about my dad, many of them uncomplementary...but the man can put the wrath of God into his voice, and even my bare imitation often scares people. This guy froze, looking at me with huge pale blue eyes.

"Uhm...I was, like, I mean, you...give me all your money?"

"What, are you asking me or telling me?"

The trembling started up again, worse than before, and I swear I saw tears in his eyes. "I'm...telling you."

"Well, you don't seem too Goddamn sure about it!" He dropped the knife as he flinched. I stepped forward, backing him up, and stepped on the knife. "You're not suited to mugging people, kid. Go home. Or at least pick a better target. I weigh three of you." Admittedly, I suspect he chose me because I was the only one there.

"But..." He curled up on himself, the way I myself used to in Jr. High when I was getting my ass housed or earlier, when my father would instruct me. "I just need a little money."

"Shit, for what? Tell me, and maybe I'll give you some. Unless I don't approve of what you want to spend it on." He didn't say anything, just backed up some more, so I advanced again. Looked him over, looked at the almost feral twitching of his eyes, the sores from lack of washing on his hands and his face, like pimples that had gone rabid. "Shit, what are you, a junkie? You're a junkie, right?"

"Man, I haven't eaten in days."

"All right." I took five dollars out of my pocket...which was a big deal to me at the time, since I only had $25 to my name. "Come on."

"What?"

"You said you haven't eaten, then come on. We'll get you some food, then." I herded him down the stairs and out of the station, then across the wet street (it seemed to drizzle the entire time I was in Chicago, for some reason...it was a very wet March) and into the Dominick's. I walked him up the aisle to the deli section, made him point out a sandwich (a pastrami on rye, I think, although I don't really remember) and something to drink, which memory reports was a Mountain Dew. I then paid, handed him the food, and sent him on his way. The whole time, he was huddled up in a ball...I'm relatively sure he suspected it was some sort of trick and I was going to kick his ass or worse. When I let him go, he ran off like I was going to hunt him down. What I did do was get back on the train and ride north, eventually getting off the train to go into a comic shop where I would engage in yet another pointless debate about the Silver Surfer and his resemblance to Hamlet...if Hamlet's father wore a big purple helmet and Hamlet could blow up small planets.

The next tale comes from my time in Washington, DC. My friend Peter Milan and I had developed this bizarre pattern where we would dare each other to go to the worst possible movies we could think of, like some sort of cinematic chicken, and then see how long we could go without making fun of it or how savagely we could mock it once we broke. So I rode down on the Metro and we saw Lost In Space.

Now, we'd already done some bad freaking movies. We'd endured the American remake of The Vanishing starring Sandra Bullock as the world's biggest bitch who gets kidnapped by Jeff Bridges as inexplicable accent man, with Kiefer Sutherland as annoying idiot motherfucker who should have just accepted his good fortune that the bitch was gone and accepted the love of Nancy Travis, who was really too good for him. We'd stared down the barrel of Starship Troopers, which actually contained anti-performances by Casper Van Diem and Denise Richards that made me realize in soul-numbing horror that Jake Busey was the lead of the movie. Jake. Busey. Jake fucking Busey! Any film that has to rest on the charisma of Jake Busey, with an additional performance by Neil Patrick Harris as Doogie Hauser, SS and Clancy Brown as the guy who made me cheer by throwing a knife into Jake Busey's palm...oh, and Dina Meyer as Dizzy, who was five billion times the actor that Denise Richards was in this film...so anyway, yes, Pete and I were acclimated to the bad movie genre. We'd watched every episode of MST3K to that point, we were toned and ready to mock this movie.

Except that it was like taking a baseball bat to a baby seal, entirely too freaking easy. What were Willam Hurt and Gary Oldman thinking? Dude, we need some fast cash. My God, it was like watching someone masturbate in front of an old black and white TV and realizing that they were actually pleasuring themselves to an old episode of the tv show...and the only people on the screen were the robot and a fuzzy suited alien. Akiva Goldsman has much to answer for (he was also responsible for the script to Batman and Robin, but Shumacher is at least as much to blame for that fiasco).

I was so freaking irate by the end of that movie that after saying goodbye to Pete, I then got on the wrong train (I lived in DC at the time, up near where Takoma Park, Maryland bordered it) and instead of riding the red line north, I rode the orange line west until I hit the end of the line, Rosslyn I seem to recall (but I could be wrong, and they've probably done work on the system since then, anyway) and finally realized my mistake. (Well, I was also pissed off about a lot of other things, too, the movie just served as a great big expletive screamed in my face. Admittedly, it wasn't as bad as Bats, the only movie Mr. Cranky wasn't hard enough on. Pete and I saw that one, too.) So, even more pissed off now that I had managed to get myself even further from my apartment, I crossed over to the other side of the platform and waited for the next train, again completely alone. If you've never been in the DC Metro area, the subway looks like something Stanley Kubrick would have shot a film in.

After a few minutes of this, a dapper looking fellow in a long grey coat and a backwards baseball cap with the confederate logo on it walks onto the platform, messing with something in his pocket. I'm a notorious paranoid, and I'm still fucking pissed about Lost in Space, so I stand there watching him as he slowly approaches, trying to look casual. I was pretending to be listening to my walkman, which wasn't actually on (I recommend this for those of you who want to avoid the mass transit small talk yet keep your attention focused on those who surround you) and waiting. Half expecting him to pull out a gun, even in the DC area where it's not all that easy to get one, and to be honest when he leisurely withdrew a balisong from his jacket, I was relieved.

As he turned to say whatever it was he was going to say, flipping the blade open, I rammed my knee into his crotch as hard as I possibly could the way my friend Marc (a Marine Corps sniper and mean-ass motherfucker) once showed me. I literally lifted him a foot off the ground by his testicles using only my right leg. As you might expect, whatever he was going to say came out a gurgle. I took the opportunity to grab his arm at the wrist, swing him around and drop my leverage into his arm using my shoulder and his elbow. He dropped the knife...I'm pretty sure I at least fractured something in his forearm...and then I jammed him over that concrete lip between the wall and the platform.

A train showed up within a minute of that, and I got on. I have no idea what happened to him, why the supposed WMATA police never showed up (there are cameras all over the stations) or why that guy was pulling a knife on me for in the first place...nor do I especially care. I hated and loved DC, and one of the reasons I hated it was the feeling I got there that it was trying to kill me. That incident was but one of the many I could share, but we'll let them go for now.

So there you go, two more of my stories. More to follow, and the tale of Tunguska, when I get a chance.

Ezrael's Tales III: Elevated trains or subway systems are not good places to attempt to rob me

Still working on the Tunguska entry...at this rate, it's looking like I might do a similar essay to the one I wrote about Henry V of England, with four or five possibilities each getting their own mini-essay within the main body of the entry. Or I might just toss it all in the hopper, who knows? Anyway, while I was working on it, I decided to give y'all another installment of the ever popular (with me, anyway, because I don't have to do any research) Ezrael's Tales, because while I'm not capable of doing a list of a hundred things you may not know about me, I can at least tell you a few at a time.

The first one comes from my time in Chicago. To make a long story short, I was very much in love with a woman, who then fell out of love with me, for what I'm sure were very good reasons (I have no idea what they were, since she never told me, but I do honestly believe she had them) and so, to get over it, I moved in with an old ex-boyfriend of hers in Chicago. No, I suppose it doesn't make any sense. Anyway, while living with him, I often would spend my days wandering around the Chicago area moping. One day, I was riding the elevated train between Evanston and Chicago, and I was on the platform waiting for another train to show up (Based on this map, I suspect it was either Howard or South Blvd, but it might have been Dempster...there was a Dominick's across the street, which features into the story later) when this young guy, maybe eighteen, with long greasy blond hair and a demeanor just this side of crystal meth addicted ferret walked up to me. His waist looked to be about the same size as my thighs, and he maybe came up to my collarbone, so I was surprised that he'd walk right up.

He then cleared his throat. I turned to regard him at the strained sound of his wheezy breathing and looked rather critically at his ragged leather jacket (especially since my jacket at the time was a rather aggressively decorated, spike encrusted monster of a jacket and his was really pathetic) and his trembling. I think it was the trembling that most affected me, even as he drew an old, rusty switchblade from his back pants pocket.

"What do you think you're doing?" I barked in my best dad voice. I often say a lot of things about my dad, many of them uncomplementary...but the man can put the wrath of God into his voice, and even my bare imitation often scares people. This guy froze, looking at me with huge pale blue eyes.

"Uhm...I was, like, I mean, you...give me all your money?"

"What, are you asking me or telling me?"

The trembling started up again, worse than before, and I swear I saw tears in his eyes. "I'm...telling you."

"Well, you don't seem too Goddamn sure about it!" He dropped the knife as he flinched. I stepped forward, backing him up, and stepped on the knife. "You're not suited to mugging people, kid. Go home. Or at least pick a better target. I weigh three of you." Admittedly, I suspect he chose me because I was the only one there.

"But..." He curled up on himself, the way I myself used to in Jr. High when I was getting my ass housed or earlier, when my father would instruct me. "I just need a little money."

"Shit, for what? Tell me, and maybe I'll give you some. Unless I don't approve of what you want to spend it on." He didn't say anything, just backed up some more, so I advanced again. Looked him over, looked at the almost feral twitching of his eyes, the sores from lack of washing on his hands and his face, like pimples that had gone rabid. "Shit, what are you, a junkie? You're a junkie, right?"

"Man, I haven't eaten in days."

"All right." I took five dollars out of my pocket...which was a big deal to me at the time, since I only had $25 to my name. "Come on."

"What?"

"You said you haven't eaten, then come on. We'll get you some food, then." I herded him down the stairs and out of the station, then across the wet street (it seemed to drizzle the entire time I was in Chicago, for some reason...it was a very wet March) and into the Dominick's. I walked him up the aisle to the deli section, made him point out a sandwich (a pastrami on rye, I think, although I don't really remember) and something to drink, which memory reports was a Mountain Dew. I then paid, handed him the food, and sent him on his way. The whole time, he was huddled up in a ball...I'm relatively sure he suspected it was some sort of trick and I was going to kick his ass or worse. When I let him go, he ran off like I was going to hunt him down. What I did do was get back on the train and ride north, eventually getting off the train to go into a comic shop where I would engage in yet another pointless debate about the Silver Surfer and his resemblance to Hamlet...if Hamlet's father wore a big purple helmet and Hamlet could blow up small planets.

The next tale comes from my time in Washington, DC. My friend Peter Milan and I had developed this bizarre pattern where we would dare each other to go to the worst possible movies we could think of, like some sort of cinematic chicken, and then see how long we could go without making fun of it or how savagely we could mock it once we broke. So I rode down on the Metro and we saw Lost In Space.

Now, we'd already done some bad freaking movies. We'd endured the American remake of The Vanishing starring Sandra Bullock as the world's biggest bitch who gets kidnapped by Jeff Bridges as inexplicable accent man, with Kiefer Sutherland as annoying idiot motherfucker who should have just accepted his good fortune that the bitch was gone and accepted the love of Nancy Travis, who was really too good for him. We'd stared down the barrel of Starship Troopers, which actually contained anti-performances by Casper Van Diem and Denise Richards that made me realize in soul-numbing horror that Jake Busey was the lead of the movie. Jake. Busey. Jake fucking Busey! Any film that has to rest on the charisma of Jake Busey, with an additional performance by Neil Patrick Harris as Doogie Hauser, SS and Clancy Brown as the guy who made me cheer by throwing a knife into Jake Busey's palm...oh, and Dina Meyer as Dizzy, who was five billion times the actor that Denise Richards was in this film...so anyway, yes, Pete and I were acclimated to the bad movie genre. We'd watched every episode of MST3K to that point, we were toned and ready to mock this movie.

Except that it was like taking a baseball bat to a baby seal, entirely too freaking easy. What were Willam Hurt and Gary Oldman thinking? Dude, we need some fast cash. My God, it was like watching someone masturbate in front of an old black and white TV and realizing that they were actually pleasuring themselves to an old episode of the tv show...and the only people on the screen were the robot and a fuzzy suited alien. Akiva Goldsman has much to answer for (he was also responsible for the script to Batman and Robin, but Shumacher is at least as much to blame for that fiasco).

I was so freaking irate by the end of that movie that after saying goodbye to Pete, I then got on the wrong train (I lived in DC at the time, up near where Takoma Park, Maryland bordered it) and instead of riding the red line north, I rode the orange line west until I hit the end of the line, Rosslyn I seem to recall (but I could be wrong, and they've probably done work on the system since then, anyway) and finally realized my mistake. (Well, I was also pissed off about a lot of other things, too, the movie just served as a great big expletive screamed in my face. Admittedly, it wasn't as bad as Bats, the only movie Mr. Cranky wasn't hard enough on. Pete and I saw that one, too.) So, even more pissed off now that I had managed to get myself even further from my apartment, I crossed over to the other side of the platform and waited for the next train, again completely alone. If you've never been in the DC Metro area, the subway looks like something Stanley Kubrick would have shot a film in.

After a few minutes of this, a dapper looking fellow in a long grey coat and a backwards baseball cap with the confederate logo on it walks onto the platform, messing with something in his pocket. I'm a notorious paranoid, and I'm still fucking pissed about Lost in Space, so I stand there watching him as he slowly approaches, trying to look casual. I was pretending to be listening to my walkman, which wasn't actually on (I recommend this for those of you who want to avoid the mass transit small talk yet keep your attention focused on those who surround you) and waiting. Half expecting him to pull out a gun, even in the DC area where it's not all that easy to get one, and to be honest when he leisurely withdrew a balisong from his jacket, I was relieved.

As he turned to say whatever it was he was going to say, flipping the blade open, I rammed my knee into his crotch as hard as I possibly could the way my friend Marc (a Marine Corps sniper and mean-ass motherfucker) once showed me. I literally lifted him a foot off the ground by his testicles using only my right leg. As you might expect, whatever he was going to say came out a gurgle. I took the opportunity to grab his arm at the wrist, swing him around and drop my leverage into his arm using my shoulder and his elbow. He dropped the knife...I'm pretty sure I at least fractured something in his forearm...and then I jammed him over that concrete lip between the wall and the platform.

A train showed up within a minute of that, and I got on. I have no idea what happened to him, why the supposed WMATA police never showed up (there are cameras all over the stations) or why that guy was pulling a knife on me for in the first place...nor do I especially care. I hated and loved DC, and one of the reasons I hated it was the feeling I got there that it was trying to kill me. That incident was but one of the many I could share, but we'll let them go for now.

So there you go, two more of my stories. More to follow, and the tale of Tunguska, when I get a chance.