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. 

Happy Thanksgiving, You Turkey!

I hope everybody is having a great Thanksgiving.  By definition, we keep this day in acknowledgement that we cannot do it all by ourselves and sometimes we need some help.  Or in cases such as myself, a whole mess of help. 

So thank you, dear reader. 

In a couple of hours I'll be heading down the road to see my family in Illinois.  I enjoy the trip so much more now since I discovered a way to completely avoid Freeport. 

For those who are not from my neck of the woods, Freeport is the wormy, festering bunghole of Illinois.  It's a place for drunks, addicts, thieves, whores, grifters, cons, winos, and the insane.  Avoiding this town is always preferred. 

But now that I have a better way home, I'm much happier, and safer. 

Thanksgiving always reminds me of a slew of good memories.  Sure, there are some bad ones, too.  My family always did enjoy drinking.  But I'm reminded of some of my favorites. 

There are moments we cling to and wish we could translate them for others.  For me, it was always about the food, sure.  But also seeing family I hadn't seen in years.  I come from a family of people who weren't always rich or flush with cash, but would save their money all year just so they could afford to come home on Thanksgiving or Christmas.  It was important. 

This was my mom's side of the family.  The Irish Catholics.  

I remember playing a lot of pinochle--the official card game of my family.  Deer Grove Rules, so there was a double deck and sometimes a triple deck.  Just to shuffle you had to use a bushel basket and a stick. 

And then there was my cousin and I playing Nintendo.  Or watching the MST3K marathons on Comedy Central.  He was always like a little brother to me so we had some great times. 

Once my sister got bored and started a game of Dragon Warrior.  

That game lasted for months.  Every holiday, we played some more.  She was pissed because it was her game, but seriously, it was a lot of fun.  We all played a whole bunch of that game.  One game lasted well into the Spring.  The adults loved it because we were out of their hair. 

I remember my Uncle Chuck getting some great Hungarian sausage in a suburb of Chicago and using that to stuff the turkey.  He was Hungarian himself and knew some of the best places to find that sort of thing. 

There were some amazing meals cooked on those holidays.  My family was great at this. 

But there was one bad turkey that needs to be addressed.  It was horrible.  Disgusting, really. 

My dad's mom decided to come visit us for Thanksgiving one year.  According to my dad, she used to be a good cook, but by the time I had gotten old enough to know the difference those days were long past. 

She was obsessed with dry food.  She would make her toast and leave it out for a few minutes to dry up.  She cooked the shit out of everything. 

And she had a problem with my mom.  So, my grandmother interfered in the kitchen as much as possible.  The worst was how she kept fucking with the temperature of the oven while the turkey was cooking.  My mom would turn her back and my grandmother would sneak up and change it.  She was a sneaky woman, my grandmother.  I was constantly catching her sneaking up on me, or trying to spy on me from around a corner.  And when I'd catch her, she'd laugh and go back to whatever she was doing. 

So yeah, the turkey that year was horrid.  My mom was furious and the rest of the family wasn't too happy either.  Everybody complained loudly about how dry the turkey was and my grandmother would say, "I know!  Isn't it wonderful?" 

Thanksgiving is sort of the time of year when we acknowledge our family is weird.  We have some really weird people in our family.  And while I'm certain they say the same thing about me, or worse, we still agree to sit in the same house, at the same table, and pretend not to let it bother us. 

If I had to work with somebody from my family, without me knowing their were related, I'd kill them.  And they would call the cops on me. 

Family doesn't press charges.  Isn't that a nice sentiment? 

So yes, I hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving.  I plan on eating too much, saying crazy things, and stealing leftovers.  I hope you do, too.  

Manly Fiction for Manly Men, by a Manly Man.

I realize now my fiction doesn't have enough testosterone.  It's just not manly enough.

Sure, sometimes my characters kill people.  And yes, a few kill them and do stuff with the bodies.  One does stuff with the bodies but he doesn't kill them.  But these men just aren't manly enough.

They usually think themselves into situations that don't require a fight.  Instead, they kill the person before anything is suspected.

Piece of Meat Victim #1 walked to his car, cautiously looking around the dark parking lot, when suddenly he felt a hot, searing pain across his throat.  As he turned around, his legs gave out, and he fell to the asphalt.  He looked up to see a man smiling broadly and holding a razor blade.  

Piece of Meat Victim #1 tried to ask the man who he was and why he slit his throat.  And most importantly, how did he creep up on him like a ninja.  But all that come out was, "arrghgle-gargle, thpht, blargh!"  

Piece of Meat Victim #1 then broke wind for the last time and died a confused man sprawled on cold asphalt. 

That's not very manly.  I should point out that from now on, whenever I describe somebody dying, they fart.  And shit themselves.  Just today I spent a whole paragraph describing the various fluids, sounds and smells associated with those last few seconds of life, and the first few minutes of death.  It wasn't manly, but I sure had fun writing it.

And that's the whole point, right?  Editors can see you smiled as you wrote the story you submitted to them.

When I was in grade school, I read spy novels and a series of books I'm not proud of.  Mack Bolan.  The Executioner. 

I buried my nose in a ton of these.  By the time I was in 7th grade, I had graduated to a whole slew of Vietnam memoirs.  Because of how I had been growing up, they made sense to me, and I learned a whole lot of the wrong lessons. 

My personal favorite was Once a Warrior King by David Donovan.  I love it.  I remember in 7th grade, I used to sit in study hall and read that, ignoring my other homework. 

It was a different time back then.  We were dealing with getting our balls back after Vietnam.  John Wayne was dead and all we had left was Stallone and a whole bunch of pissed off veterans who didn't want to talk about it. 





So now I'm trying to make manly fiction and it just isn't going so well.  Joe R. Lansdale pulls it off perfectly with his Hap n' Leonard Series.   They're manly men solving crimes in manly ways.   Of course, Mr. Lansdale is a walkin' boss himself.  I'm pretty sure he would whoop my ass rather quickly.

Hemingway was known for beating the crap out of people.  Every professor I ever had despised the man and his fiction. 

After recently reading Strega by Andrew Vachss, I decided I should use that as a template to make my own fiction more manly.

The Token Bad Guy sneered at Willie and called him a "midget."  Willie smiled because that allowed him to do what he needed to.  

Willie--the only little person to ever play the in NBA.  After that, a short tenure in the porn industry, then he moved on to starting up a series of safe houses for battered women.  Only his close friends knew his real name.  Willie was just his porn name.  

Willie unleashed a series of punishing testicular-based attacks while his girl Vera watched and smiled.  She still worked as a call girl but only for twenty grand a night.  She used that to fund her research into a cure for pediatric cancer.  But after living on the mean streets of Scum City, she was hard as drunk's liver.  

I kept a lookout for cops while Willie did his customary stomp on the Token Bad Guy.  Once he was on the ground, Willie unleashed his 14-inch meat hammer and began smacking it against the Token Bad Guy's head.  

"I guess he took offense at that term, asshole."  

"Make him stop!  Make him stop!"  

But it was too late.  The Token Bad Guy lost consciousness from the severe beating.  

  

Once again, that didn't seem to work, either.  I mean, why would a dwarfish NBA player/porn star and his hooker/cancer researcher girlfriend hang around a genius necrophiliac private investigator? 


Maybe my fiction needs more grease?  And guns!  Can't forget guns... 

Dirk lifted the Chrysler transmission on his shoulders and began to wedge it under the woman's van on the hoist.  She was stunning in her black evening dress and pearls.  

"So," he began.  "Big night tonight?  You seem pretty dressed up."  

"Oh this?"  She sounded bored.  "I always wear Prada."  

An old Elvis song played on the radio and Dirk absently moved his hips from side to side as he threaded the bolts to the tranny. 

Suddenly, a Random Rapist Thug ran into the shop and headed right towards the hot woman.  She screamed.  

Dirk threw a wrench at the Random Rapist Thug and hit him square in the face, dropping him to the concrete floor.  And that's when his friends followed up behind him.  

Dirk reached into his toolbox and pulled out his Dan Wesson .500 Mag Revolver with the chrome plating and custom leather grips.  Three quick shots and the Random Rapist Thugs were on the ground with holes the size of basketballs in their chests.  

"You save me!"  The hot woman looked at Dirk with lust in her eyes and began to strip off her dress.  

"Wait, baby."  Dirk held out a hand.  "Let me finish this tranny first.  A man's gotta do his job, after all."  

That's right!  A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.  And right now, I gotta stop being a pansy and write some manly fiction!  Fiction with grease, and guns, and cartoonishly large members.  And stupid women with no souls and so many mutually exclusive characters traits they couldn't possibly exist in real life.

Yup!  That's what I'm gonna start writing.  Just as soon as I'm done with my short story about the pastry chef too terrified of the lady he buys eggs from to tell her he's madly in love with her.  

Back in the Saddle Again....

When I was a kid, the family dog was a mutt half a dog tall and two dogs long, and her name was Midget.  She was a great family dog.  She hated men, barked only when there was a problem, never licked and loved to chase the tennis ball. 

In fact, playing fetch was her most favorite thing in the world, and we all played it with her daily.  My mom would play fetch in the mornings, I played fetch in the afternoon when I came home from school, and my sister would play fetch later on in the evening. 

The dog was in great shape and loved every bit of it. 

So one day, I had a great idea--I got Midget excited and riled up about chasing a tennis ball, and then I threw about a dozen of them at once.  For a split second, life was suddenly the best it could ever possibly be, and every great dream she ever had suddenly came true.

She darted around, picking up and putting down each tennis ball, never bringing anything back.  Then she looked over at me, cocked her head to the side and trotted over to me wagging her tail awkwardly.

"Get the ball," I told her.  She looked back and then just trotted off.  She was done.

Having my computer back is like that.  I have a ton of Works In Progress (WIP) to get done and I was really excited about getting my computer so I could tear into them.  But now that I have my computer, I'm more interested in farting around, playing games and checking out various places.

Plus my monitor is very old and dark, so I can't see images all that well, and the glare kind of hurts my eyes.

But that hasn't stopped these WIPs from trying to get my attention.

"When are you going to sub me, Ted?"

"Wait!  I'm almost ready to get sent out, I just need some final editing."

"Shut up and wait your turn!  He's sub'd me out twice and it's my turn until I'm published!"

"All you guys need to hold on," I said.  "I'll get to you when I'm ready."

"When the hell is that going to be?"  The Performance short story was glaring at me.  He was a special breed and not all too patient anymore.

"Soon," I said.  "I promise."

So that's what I'm doing today.  It's my day off, the Bears are on, F1 is on and I'm cooking bean soup.  In between all of that I'm checking out various things and looking at what needs attention now.

What can I get done today?

All the while, the Big Clock just keeps on ticking.   

The Tragic Death of a Computer (And the Harlot Replacement)

"I can't do this anymore, Ted."  It restarted again. 

"No, you're fine.  We just had you doing too much."  I ran C-Cleaner again.  That usually helps. 

"I'm pretty tired, man."  For a computer, it had done alright for the past 4 years.  And I had gotten it used.

"Yeah, but we have all kinds of shit to do."  I didn't want to game or watch a bunch of porn.  I just wanted to write and surf the web a bit. 

"I'm not gonna make it, Ted.  I'm done."  And that's when half the functions stopped working.  And I couldn't get online to do anything but send e-mail. 

I ran all the software I had to fix the problem, but it wasn't a software issue.  The motherboard was going out and this was the final death throe. 

I will admit I was lost for a while.  I e-mailed people from work when I could. 

And then there was the whole fiasco with HSN and how they fucked me.  I should have known better, but I was grabbing at straws. 

A circus freak let me borrow her broken laptop.  It hurt my eyes and the screen slowly degraded to nothing.  I found a spare old monitor and plugged that in to the laptop.  It was a shitty, shitty way to live.  The laptop was crap and kept clicking on random shit I never selected.  Sometimes it would just close the browser in the middle of doing stuff. 

The circus freak claimed it was because somebody had kneeled on the laptop while it was on her bed.  Figures. 

So I ordered a replacement from TigerDirect.  I love those guys. 

But after all I'd been through, would I be in trouble again?  Would I just be left disappointed? 

So after spending more than a month living the Saga of the Computer, I can say I now have a replacement that will last me for a few years.  It's fast and it runs quite well. 

People have been very understanding and I appreciate that.  This blog is now just short of 3000 views.  That's pretty damned good for being up less than a year. 

I'm currently working on coming up with t-shirt designs.  Once I do, I'll post how to get those shirts.  The trick is to make them so folks can wear them in public without getting too many bad looks. 

Thank you, folks, for all your patience as the guy with the horror-themed blog didn't have a computer for the month of October.  Embarrassing, yes--but unavoidable. 

And now I can get on with NaNo.  November is National Novel Writing Month and I'm 13 days late.  This is terrible but I'll make that time up I'm sure. 

XOXO

Ted