Saying Goodbye to 2013, A Warning for 2014

Southern Wisconsin has some very secluded spots.  For instance, in a patch of woods tucked away between rolling hills, off a gravel road that winds for miles sits a pole barn.  It doesn't look special from the outside.  It looks like any other barn the many farmers around here use.

Photo used with permission from JPVehmeier Photo

Inside?  That's another story.

As with most barns the floors were concrete.  On one side of the building sat a van.  A creepy van.  A van you don't ever want to see outside your home.

On the opposite side of the van sat a man.  He was naked but for a black hood over his head.  The cold steel chair he was duct taped to was bolted into the floor.

I walked slowly around the man, the heels of my boots clicking on the cold floor and echoing in the barn.  Outside the wind blew snow against the side of the barn with a slight ticking sound.

I stopped in front of the man and looked down upon him.  He was motionless.

I pulled the hood off his head with a quick snap and took the gag out of his mouth.  A look of fear moved across his face.

"You!"

"Hello, 2013.  Going somewhere?"

"Hey, look," he said.  "I know you haven't had the best time these past few months."

"Oh?"  I slowly walked around him.  "These past few months, huh?"  I walked over to a table I had set up with the night's entertainment.  "So, it was just these past few months that have been rough, in your opinion?"

"Well," he started.  "I know this whole year wasn't easy.  I mean it started pretty hard for you."

"That's one way of putting it, I suppose."

"But," he began with a stammer.  "We had some good times, too.  Right?"

"Name one."

"What?"

"Name a good time I had."  The wind had picked up outside and more snow blasted against the outside.  It was chilly inside the barn, but the firebox was stoked and hot.  Inside logs popped and snapped.

"Well," he said slowly.  "There was the time you went to see your family."

"And?"

"Umm...you saw your family a couple of times."

"Like when my mom had cancer?"

"Yeah!"  But then he realized his error and stopped.

"Oh no," I said while picking up a sledge hammer with a short handle.  "Let's continue."

"I'm sorry!"

"But there is so much more to talk about, 2013.  We haven't even gone over the various women."

"Please," he said.  "Let me go.  I'm almost done.  I'm almost out of here."

"You must be held accountable."  I didn't yell.  Yelling is such a waste of energy.

"That one wasn't my fault, Ted.  That started in 2012!"

"I know.  I don't hold you accountable for her.  And she's been dealt with."

"Oh God!"

"He's not here today, 2013.  It's just you and I."

"I'm gonna be sick."  He began to gag a bit.  "Please let me go!"

"Why should I do that?  You really brought some bad things.  Unrequited love is one thing, but to have my face rubbed in it and laughed at?  No, I'm afraid we can't have that."

"But I'm not over yet--"

I brought the sledge hammer down on his foot with all my strength.  He screamed as the bones crushed and burst through his skin.

"I'm sorry, 2013.  You had your chance."

"But why?"  He was sobbing.  "I only have a few hours left."

"I'm going to take you apart, now.  Bone by bone, tendon by tendon, skin from skin.  I'm going to do to you what you did to me."

"Please forgive me," he gasped.

"I don't know what that means or why I would want to."

I started with the straight razor.  Small cuts here and there, then deeper and deeper.  I cut off his nose, ears and lips.

The hot pokers in the fire box glowed until I put them in his eye sockets.

"Can you still hear me, 2013?"

He grunted.  There were just a few minutes of life left in him.

"Do you know what disappoints me the most about you?  It's the promise.  It wasn't having my face rubbed in that which I'll never have, or having a pretty woman ignore me, or getting a rejection letter.  It's that for a moment there midway through, I actually thought you were going to be better.  And in a matter of a few weeks it was all stripped away.  You disappoint me, 2013."

The chainsaw was a nice toy.  Legs and arms, already mangled and skinned, flew off his torso.  The intestine was fun, too.  I loved how the warm blood sprayed on my face.

2013 Expired without me noticing.  I was taken with the ecstasy of it all and lost my track of time.   As I turned off the chainsaw and went to put it on the table, I noticed 2014 standing in the doorway.  His eyes were wide with terror and he had dropped to his knees with his hands over his mouth in an attempt to hold in the scream.

"Oh God," he said as he looked over the shredded and torn bits of 2013. 

"He's not here today."  When he looked over at me, covered in blood and gore, he tried to talk but couldn't.  I stared at him deeply, making sure our eyes were locked.

"I'm expecting better things from you, 2014.  And you really don't want to disappoint me, now do you?" 

Stop The Christmas Slaughter!

I grew up in a family of great cooks.  If you've ever seen me, you'd know this right away.  We love to eat and we all love to cook. 

The holidays were wonderful because Mom and her other sisters would bake.  Usually the day after Thanksgiving was the big one.  All day long Mom would be in the kitchen baking cookies, cakes and pies. 

One of her specialties was molasses cookies.  They were perfect with just a bit of ginger.  No molasses cookie would last beyond a week and people were constantly bugging her to make more.  As the years progressed, her molasses cookie bake-a-thon consumed the day.  Hours and hours, using up huge jars of molasses. 

And then, shortly after turning 12, my dad took me hunting for pheasants in November just before Thanksgiving.  He made a comment, "Yeah, your mom is really going to need a lot of molasses this year.  Your uncle and I are going to need your help.  Besides, it's time you learned how to do this for when your wife bakes molasses cookies." 

The following week was one of the most traumatic events of my childhood and permanently scarred me for life. 

I always thought molasses was made from some grain or sugar, or something like that.  But no, it isn't.  Molasses is just as the name implies--the asses of moles. 

I was horrified to learn this. 

How could a body part of a rodent taste so damned good in a cookie?  How was this possible? 

The slaughter began early, just after dawn.  My uncle had a hose stuck in a hole in the ground.  When there was enough light, he began pumping water.  My job was to whack a mole with a club when it stuck it's head up. 

We must have cleared a dozen fields that day.  Hundreds and hundreds of tiny, furry little moles.  Innocent creatures.  I would bash their heads in and throw their carcass in the back of the truck. 

By the end of the day, blood ran under the tailgate of my dad's Chevy pick-up. 

That night we skinned and carved the little moles up.  Dad showed me a few tricks and how to hold the knife.  It was a grim assembly line.  My uncle would skin them, Dad would chop their little asses off, and I would grind them up in a large meat grinder. 

Blood got everywhere.  My shoes, my pants, my sweatshirt.  By the end of the night I looked like I had just chopped up an entire sorority with a chainsaw. 

We put the mole's asses into a jar with some sugar, then with the lid off we put them in a water bath that was slowly heated with a wood fire.  Eventually the water boiled and the mole's asses cooked, combining with a few other ingredients my uncle threw in for good measure. 

By morning the next day, we had about a dozen large jars of molasses.  And I haven't eaten a molasses cookie since. 

It's time we end this senseless slaughter!  It's time we stop murdering moles so we can have good cookies.  Yummy, delicious molasses cookies. 

Mom doesn't make molasses cookies anymore.  I stopped hunting moles when Dad died.  I refuse.  It's one family tradition I just cannot follow.  Mom understands and doesn't press the issue.  Truth be told, I think she's happy to not have to slave away in a hot kitchen making cookies all day.  And I'm fine with that. 

The question is, are you, dear reader?  It's time to write your congressman and all those fancy food magazines.  Perhaps Anthony Bourdain can be enlisted to help us, too.  Once Rachel Ray realizes the error of her ways, I'm sure no more molasses recipes will appear in her magazine or show.  I know from experience Martha Stewart is a lost cause because she actually enjoys the slaughter.  I've seen pictures.  She was smiling. 

She was smiling. 

Have a Weird Christmas!

We weirdos never get enough credit.

It's tough being this weird all the time.  We get ostracized and picked on.  Well, I don't get picked on because I'm creepy and the van is legendary.  But most weird people get picked on. 

And you never get The Girl.  You know The Girl--that one who is by far too normal and sane to be caught dead hanging out with you.  The Girl doesn't get all your jokes and the ones she does get she finds too dark to laugh at. 

Usually Valentine's Day is the roughest time to be weird.  Everybody is off being happy while we're pondering the weaponization of chocolate. 

But Christmas is a close second.  It's too.....sane.  All that preconceived, carbon-copy, canned happiness is just frustrating.  People having parties and doing social things.  And nobody wants to invite a weirdo unless they have to--like family. So most of us weird people do our own things on Christmas. 

One of my favorites is running up and down the streets on Christmas Eve night, at about 2AM, with a large belt of sleigh bells.  Sometimes I shout, "Merry Christmas!"  Then, I watch the lights turn on in the houses and sometimes I can actually hear the kids screaming. 

This reminds me of a weird story.  So, back when I was in college, I used to hang around various people in the BDSM community.  It wasn't so much my thing as I could relate to them and they accepted me.  BDSM people aren't too picky.  Anyways, I needed some leather belts, restraints, harnesses, whips, prods and crops.  All the things a good Dom needs.  And I was looking for a belt so I could attach my sleigh bells. 

So, I went to the local Farm & Fleet store because it was a small town, and that's where you go for stuff like that.  Keep in mind that back then, I was only person on campus with a shaved head, one of the very few guys with an ear ring and I wore a dog collar.  And I'm not a small guy. 

But I was at Farm & Fleet checking on various toys and tools.  I had a couple of harnesses around my neck, one was tightened around my chest, and I was experimenting with various whips, prods and crops.  Since nobody was around for me to hit, and nobody was there to hit me, I was hitting myself on the backside just to make sure they had the right feel.  I did that for about 10 minutes before I looked up to see 3 farming couples standing at the end of the isle.  Husbands and wives.  They were just staring at me with their jaws open. 

I smiled and gave them the "thumbs up" sign and they walked off shaking their heads and muttering about the crazy college kids in town. 

So yeah, being weird at Christmas is fun, and often times we have to entertain ourselves.  I've gotten good at it, too. 

Larry Update:  Larry, my houseplant, has grown 3 feet in the past 3 weeks.  I'm totally impressed with his effort into this.  Each morning I cheer him on and let him know how proud I am of his growth.  But I have to be careful because if I do it too much, he starts to curse at me. 

And Larry has a very foul mouth.  Or whatever he's using to talk.