A word here and a word there, and sometimes they’d come together in a wonderful ejaculation of synergy and you’d end up with a funny new phrase, like “doucherocket.” But it kind of all began when I was on the staff of my high school newspaper.

For some reason, high schools think that creating a newspaper will teach kids about journalism. What journalism has to do with reporting current events, I’ll never understand, but we had it nonetheless and were tasked with encapsulating the entire goings-on of the school into a weekly 8-page document that had to be released at least once every two months or whenever it was convenient. At our school, the newspaper staff had a dedicated period (the last of the day) to research stories, write them, and submit them to one person to do all of the work. So each day, we’d have 45 minutes to work on our stories, and of those 45 minutes, most staff members used between zero and a half to work, and that tended to be accidental, like knocking over the photo morgue while Indian wrestling.

Like any great journalistic endeavor, our periodical’s staff was divided into beats. Someone covered the sports beat (taking sporadic and inaccurate notes on a football game while making out in the bleachers), someone covered politics (who will win class president? Probably Gretchen, who I think was the only person sucker enough to run), someone covered current events outside the school (we broke news of the first gulf war fully six weeks after it was over), someone took photos (of girls’ asses) and someone (usually Mark) was in charge of gathering our advisor’s hair into wads and stapling it together.

I petitioned to be a columnist.

“What would you write about?” asked our advisor, Miss Chamberlain.

“I don’t know. Stuff,” I answered.

“And why do you want to be a columnist?”

“I have many opinions. And I’m very interested in the fact that I wouldn’t actually have to do any work.”

The cool thing about American freedom of the press plus the fact that your advisor clearly doesn’t give a shit is that high school Dave Barrys like me have virtually zero oversight. Occasionally, I’d have a fight on my hands come press time, but I had a mullet haircut and hence won all such confrontations.

“You can’t talk about decapitating Barney the Dinosaur,” Miss C. would say.

I’d turn on my indignant face. “Why not? The people have a right to know.”

“It’s gruesome.”

“More gruesome than the September 11 attacks? More gruesome than the swine flu or SARS, or the Marines scandal at Guantanamo Bay?”

“Those things all happened well after you graduated high school,” she’d say. “Are you maybe getting confused while writing about this fifteen years from now?”

“Perhaps you haven’t noticed that I have a mullet,” I’d reply.

And the story would run, because of the importance of the third estate. Or first estate. I can never remember the estates. Which one is alcoholic clowns?

Mine was an embattled existence. I was constantly having to fight for my rights. Miss C. protested the fact that none of the scholarships that I wrote about (”Fund for people whose ambition it is to strap a roll of toilet paper to their heads, burrow into the center of a Toledo Mud Hens baseball game, and pop up yelling, ‘Mabel, did you feed the cat?’”) actually existed. She bristled when I wrote about Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer telling Santa, “Up yours, fatso.” She had second thoughts about the relevance of Elvis being alive in Michigan. There were problems with the piece on my friend Gary using his Ford Escort to plow fields, on the bizarre hairstyle of a student teacher (it looked like a badger), on a supposed mule lottery, on Winnie the Pooh being mildly retarded. But I won them all.

Unfortunately, most of these great relics have vanished. My friend and rival Melissa, who has finally admitted that I’m funny, found some old newspapers in her basement or walls or something, so you can go ask her if you’re interested.

All I have is my interview with Matt Kern. It wasn’t a column, but it does reflect the hard-nosed journalistic integrity and grit that our student body relied on the Advocate to provide approximately every once in a while, whenever we got around to it.

No Barney, but there are nighties and toasters involved. Enjoy.

(Oh, I should mention that this Toaster Lovers’ Association was in fact formed and that I attended its meetings regularly at Uncle John’s Pancake House. I even won the door prize, a toaster named Eugene, on the basis of my extreme merit and the fact that everyone else left. Have I written about the TLA yet? If not, I should do a piece. The Toaster Lovers’ Association and its sister organization, The Flame Squad, were the very types of monuments to idiocy that deserve more press.)

You may think I’m funny, and at least 75% of you have decided it must be a laff riot to live with me like it must be a laff riot (or highly disturbing, or both) to live with The Bloggess, and probably you fantasize about it constantly or at least use a calculator from time to time, which, let’s face it, is pretty much the same thing.

My wife is always telling me how hilarious I am. Just the other day, after I wrote a particularly funny piece, she came upstairs from her basement office and told me, honestly, with zero false praise and zero thought to pumping me up and making me feel good, straight from her heart, she goes, “Did you remember to buy shrimp when you went to the store this weekend?”

And I was like, “Did you read my blog?”

“Um, yeah.”

“And?”

She shrugged in a noncommittal manner. “It was good.” Then, to make sure I knew how much she truly enjoyed it, she added, “But seriously, did you buy shrimp?”

Look, it’s not her fault. And it’s not my fault, either. You’re around something enough and you stop noticing it, kind of like how America has stopped noticing that Ryan Seacrest has no talent. It’s why ambulances vary their sirens every so often, so that people who have gotten used to an approaching WEE-OOO-WEE-OOO are startled back into paying attention when it changes to WEEOW-WEEOW-WEEOW. If I really wanted to keep my family on their toes, I’d adopt similar tactics. I’d start talking about something interesting that happened today (clown caught in escalator, man hit by pie, floating baby) and then start making siren noises.

But really the bigger problem is that I have a fixed repository of stories. They seem interesting to you, but that’s because you’re a fresh audience. Wait until I start repeating myself, like I do in front of my family.

For instance. You spend enough time around me and you start to realize that that story about my friend who tried to go through the Canadian border with large electronic equipment, gore-clotted hooks, a bloody hatchet, and a giant bag of unmarked pills in a car whose owner was apparently missing is one I tell to everyone. It’s funny when I tell it to you, and it’s kind of amusing the first time you’re near me when I tell it to someone else. By the second time, you’re correcting inconsistent parts of the story and by the third time, you’re sticking your tongue into the toaster.

And then what happens is I try to tell you the story again. You’re faced with a decision between being polite and mocking me. If you’re creative, you can do both.

This is pretty typical:

Me: “I understand why it’s supposedly illegal to yell ‘FIRE’ in a crowded place. But do you think you could yell ‘INSTANCE OF COMBUSTION!’ and get away with it? I mean, it’s technically the same thing, but most people wouldn’t understand what you were talking about. Of course, that would defeat the purpose, but just for the sake of argument, I’m wondering if it would fly.”

Robin: “What?”

Me: “Did I ever tell you about the Penis Game?”

Robin: [Ignoring me]

Me: “This guy in high school used to want to play this game in the lunchroom where he’d say ‘penis’ quietly, so that nobody could really hear it, and then the next person would have to say it a little louder. The game went on until someone chickened out and would back off from yelling ‘penis’ to the lunchroom.”

Robin: “I think the TiVo is broken again.”

Me: “But the problem was that when the game got to my friend Travis, he’d stand up on the table and yell ‘PEEEEEENIS!” at the top of his voice. Then he’d ad-lib for a while, like ”MONUMENTAL PENIS! SUPER-PENIS ERECTION MAN!’ Hey, are you listening to me?”

Robin: [Starting at the TV]

Me: “I’m turning gay and running off with the dog.”

Robin: “What?”

Me: “Did you hear my penis story?”

Robin: “Yes. You’ve told it like ten times.”

Me: “No I haven’t.”

Robin: “Did Travis eventually start yelling, ‘Big clit!’ ”

Me: “Yeah, but…”

Robin: “Ten times. Seriously, what the hell is wrong with the TiVo?”

So I’m going to have to start keeping records. Walk around with a little notebook. Create an Excel chart of everyone I know and how many times I’ve told them a certain story. Create an algorithm to determine when I should tell a story to a new party if a second, overexposed party is within earshot. Develop a way of shuttling said overexposed people out of the room, possibly by tossing snacks in one direction and running in another, or else yelling “PENIS!” and disappearing in the ensuing melee.

And when I start running low on new ideas, I’ll just suggest that you go get Rob “Diesel” Kroese’s new book Mercury Falls because it’s sure to be hilarious. And I doubt there’s any penis in it at all because I don’t think angels have them. That would explain the rapture, maybe, when you think about it.

1. Yes, I actually go to the fair.

2. Yes, seriously.

3. No, I’m not kidding.

I have a love/hate relationship with the county fair. I love that it’s here because it showcases everything that’s wrong with humanity (and who doesn’t like that?), but I hate that it sort of heralds the beginning of the end of summertime. This summer in particular seemed to go really, really fast, and that’s not cool at all.

But the people-watching I get to do on the fairgrounds kind of makes up for it.

See, you forget that these people exist if you stay at home, avoiding the fair like some sort of black plague that ushers with it human mutants wearing matching mall-photo-booth t-shirts stretched out over gigantic, distended Orca bellies, fried foods running in congealed little balls down their protruding and exposed torsos, long rat tails of hair hanging down their sweaty backs, teeth akimbo and fighting to be free from the confines of their gums, glottal hyuh sounds coming from their throats while they smoke through yellow teeth, having abomination sex with their three-thumbed sisters. You forget that there is still a literacy problem in this country, and a racism problem, and an oral hygiene problem, and a bestiality problem. Without the fair, you wouldn’t realize that sometimes people injure themselves with a hatchet while removing a corn on their toe, receive third-degree burns about the buttocks while launching bottle rockets creatively, or are accidentally shot by their fathers while hunting delicious squirrel.

Not everyone is like me: cool as hell sitting in front of a computer all day, laughing at math jokes and knowing a shitload of Star Trek trivia. I go to the fair to see that which is unlike myself, and unlike this blogosphere we’re all so comfortable in. To people-watch. And to feel better about my teeth.

Our local fair is actually exceedingly dangerous, so I kind of feel like a thrill-seeker when I go. One year, a steam-powered vehicle on display exploded and killed a few people. Another year we made headlines for an e-coli outbreak thanks to a leaky water supply used by all of the concession vendors. One year, it’s sure to be an escaped monkey rampage. There aren’t actually any monkeys on display, so this scenario requires a hidden cache of monkeys somewhere on the premises, or possibly a monkey-stocked train derailment in the vicinity. Fingers crossed.

My wife Robin always looks forward to the fair because it’s a chance to forget that the rest of us exist. After eating a gyro made of what looks suspiciously like grocery store Steak-Ums, she typically falls into some sort of trance or fugue while watching horses parade around a ring at a painfully slow and uninteresting pace. This leaves me not only totally alone conversation-wise (”Robin, do you want any of this funnel cake? Robin? Robin?” or “Robin, I’ve been shot. Robin? Robin?”), but also leaves me in charge of the kids, both of whom eventually begin to roll down a steep slope toward the ring and become hazards to everyone involved.

This is a nostalgic coma for her, I believe. Back in her high school days, she used to bring horses to the fair for the entire fair week and ride slowly and uninterestingly around that ring herself, avoiding children and fat adults rolling haplessly down the slope, as part of the local 4-H club. I’m sure our children will have to join this boonies club which gets you beaten up if you ever move around city folk. I do think you can be part of 4-H (a farm organization whose 4 H’s refer to Hands, Hedberg, Hadron Colliders, and Hermione) without learning to change the oil on sheep or cows, though. I think you can just do activities with horses. Like backgammon and tax planning.

So this is how it goes: Gyro, horse show. Children rolling haplessly downhill. Mullets, dangerous ferris wheel. Inappropriate midriff shirts. Realization that there are a ton of 12-year-old sluts in the world. Funnel cake. Fin.

That starts tonight. I’m trying to blend in, if possible. I’m wearing a Skynard shirt and a confederate flag doo-rag. Now wish me luck shooting these bottle rockets out of my ass.

So the other day, I find myself alone in the house and I decide to watch the remake of Dawn of the Dead. I’ve watched it like a dozen times and keep rewatching it because I’m all about seeing the dead come back to life. It’s like, inspirational or something. It’s comforting to know that death is not the end. Beyond death is rebirth as an ambling corpse with a neverending bloodlust and hunger for human brains. Just like it says in the Bible.

For some reason, I really dig movies where the world ends, which is strange because if the world actually did end, I’d be totally bummed out. Still, in movie form, it’s total win. And a movie gets bonus points if the end of the world is populated by zombies.

Like the 28 Days Later movies. British zombies, with regrettable extensive shots of Cillian Murphy’s unit.

And just when you think the Brits got rid of all of the zombies? BOOM, some dumbshit Typhoid Mary lets that monkey loose again in the sequel and Britain is once again overrun with zombies. I told this British guy
I know, FUCK THAT, I’m NEVER coming to Britain because you’ve had two large rage zombie outbreaks and CLEARLY don’t have the resources needed to contain them, and he responded that that was cool, that he’s never coming to America because he’s seen Dawn of the Dead. Which is kind of where this whole thing started, anyway.

Why do I like zombie movies? Because they give you perspective.

Dawn of the Dead totally trumps Slumdog Millionnaire as a “be thankful for what you have” movie. Sure, you’ll appreciate your life more if you see how shitty conditions are in India, but it’s far more sobering when you realize how lucky you are that you live in a country that is not overrun with the living dead. Imagine a “my life is hard” showdown with someone in the middle of a walking dead plague. You’d say, “I
can’t pay my bills,” and he’d be all, “Oh, I feel so sorry for you; zombies are eating my face.” I’ll bet even the kids in Slumdog could watch that movie and feel better about their lives. And can you imagine if the two were combined and Indian slums were overrun with zombies? Oh God, imagine the diarrhea.

So I laid down on the couch, set my laptop on my stomach, and started
kind of live blogging on Twitter while watching the movie. Because there were things I needed to know, and had thoughts I needed to share. We all come closer together when the dead roam the earth.

JohnnyBTruant: On the set of this movie, what were the zombies like in person? I’ll bet they were assholes.

JohnnyBTruant: …but on the upside, I’ll also bet they didn’t eat up all of the stuff on the Craft Services table.

See, I’ll bet zombies make shitty actors. Sure, nobody portrays a zombie like a zombie (”you do what you know,” and all that), but I’ll bet they keep trying to eat the live actors. And you know they don’t make good conversation.

And there were a LOT of zombie extras in this movie, too. I think extras usually get this tiny little fee for appearing in a movie. But you know how zombie extras are — they probably spent all of their pittance on
brains, and then came back so that the bigger stars could take advantage and have sex with them. Except that you should never let a zombie perform oral sex on you. Seriously.

JohnnyBTruant: On set, how could you tell the zombies apart from the regular actors who were just real douchebags?

But by this point in the movie, I was caught up in the illusion and was starting to forget about actors and sets. The characters are all bunkered in the mall (ironic that unlike in real life, the zombies are outside of the mall) and there has been much limb-tearing and bone-shattering and a few head shots and at least one broken pool cue through the head. Everyone has blood all over themselves and everyone is carelessly getting it on the walls, on the floor, on Ving Rhames. Nobody is bothering to Swiffer anything.

JohnnyBTruant: There’s so much blood all over walls and everything in this movie. If you hired a zombie as a janitor, you’d have to fire him like right away.

But what about the more pressing concern? All of this co-mingling of gore: Your gore in my cuts; my gore in your cuts; zombie brains on everyone’s sleeves following a saw incident.

JohnnyBTruant: Hey, do you think zombies can get AIDS? Because that’s some high-risk shit right there.

And really, I thought — why couldn’t they get AIDS? They can get pregnant. Or rather, they can become zombies once they’re already pregnant, and then inevitably the baby becomes a zombie, too. A zombie woman would squeeze out her baby and if you could keep her from eating it, you could totally get her a copy of Social Distortion’s Mommy’s Little Monster album as a shower present, except that you’d have to throw it at her from a high place because otherwise she’d devour you.

And so I just kept coming up with questions that nobody can answer. Do zombies have dinner parties? Because they’d surely be ironic if so. And what do the animals think during a zombie attack? A lot of zombie movies suggest that zombie people like to eat people, but not so much animals. Animals would rule the world and even during the chaos, they’d basically just think, “Oh, everyone’s acting like Ashton Kutcher now.” Until everyone died (again) and the animals then learned how to use DVD players so they could watch Resident Evil, which is the only movie I can think of where zombie dogs get any play, and even then, those dogs aren’t so much zombies as they are inside-out.

Fundamentally, a zombie plague changes the culture of any country it touches. In fact, it homogenizes us. That’s strange to think about, because you’d figure that Iraqi zombies would be different from American zombies. You’d think Iraqi zombies would be more fundamentalist and maybe wear turbans, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. All zombies are the same. We’d be so much better off as a world if we could just learn from the zombies. Except for the implications it has on the whole “staying alive” thing, and on popular culture.

JohnnyBTruant: Zombie humor is bad. You’re like, “What has four wheels and flies?” and they’re all “AAARGAGEGHG.” And their timing sucks.

Of course, it doesn’t stop there.

JohnnyBTruant: You know, I’ll bet zombie karaoke is TERRIBLE.

They all seem so totally zoned out and high, but I have to wonder if it’s the living humans driving them wild. Would they settle when all of the humans were dead and zombified?

In fact, if you could get all of the zombies in one place and keep them from going anywhere (maybe maroon them on Iceland and just keep telling them their passports are expired if they try to leave), it’d be an interesting social experiment to see if they ever developed a government. Or a theater district. Both relate; I’ll be zombies are excellent at both long rants and at filibustering. I’ll bet diversity would suffer, though, and all art would be like watching Dane Cook movies.

Eventually, the movie ended and I had to stop thinking about zombies. Except that you can never really stop thinking about them, because that’s when they get you — when you feel safe. And modern zombies? They’re so fast that you can’t look away for even a second. Used to be, in the Night of the Living Dead days, you’d see zombies coming for like ten minutes before they got anywhere near you. And then you could probably just put up some red velvet valet ropes and a set of dress code rules to keep them at bay. Not so much with these modern zombies. Zombies 2.0.

Your perspective is skewed when you return to reality after something like this. I have to use a hedge trimmer. Will I have to disembowel anyone with it? And what about that chainsaw? Because in the movie, the hot chick gets accidentally chainsawed, and even though it’s gross, it does cut her bra strap and I got all conflicted. What is acceptable behavior in this zombie-heavy world? If I’m going to be trimming limbs, am I allowed to remove clothing with my power tools if I manage to polish off a few zombies in the doing? These are the things that keep great thinkers awake at night.

It’s hard to say in this crazy, modern world we live in.

Each of the ringed holes has a point value assigned to it. You get seven balls, and your goal is to score as highly as possible using those seven. The game promises that you’ll “Win a prize every time!” but the joke is on the sucker who plays it because it costs 50 cents and the prizes are various-sized superballs. So even when you win, you lose.

Of course, every time we go, that sucker is me. We played on Friday, Austin and I taking turns shooting the balls into the holes, and walked away with two brightly colored superballs that I’m sure will eventually end up lodged in someone’s throat.

On the ride home, Austin stuck the superballs into his pockets and decided to try to outsmart us.

Austin: “Daddy? Mommy? Do you know where my balls are?”

Me: “Your balls are missing?”

Austin: “I can’t find them. My balls are gone.”

Robin: “Austin, your balls are your responsibility.”

Austin: “Daddy, do you know where my balls are?”

We were at a stoplight, so I looked back. He was all smiley, like he was hiding something. Or two things.

Me: “Are they in your pants?”

Austin: [searching] “Haha! Yes! My balls are in my pants! Did you know that my balls were in my pants?”

Robin: “Well, it’s where they should be.”

Austin: “I’m going to play with them.”

Me: “Hey! Don’t play with your balls in the car. Keep them in your pants.”

Robin: “Always a good policy. In fact, I want you to keep your balls in your pants until you turn 18.”

Austin, of course, proceeded to defy us by taking his balls out and playing with them on the drive home. Eventually he started showing them to Sydney, age 15 months. This was a problem since she tends to eat everything, including the 7, 9, and plus sign off of a calculator.

Me: “Austin! Keep your balls away from your sister.”

Austin: “She likes them.”

Robin: “She could choke on them. Keep them to yourself.”

Austin: “I’m just putting them on her.”

Me: “Don’t put your balls on your sister. I’ll bet your uncle never put his balls on Mommy when they were growing up.”

Robin: “Damn right.”

Austin: “Did he even have balls?”

Me: “That’s what I hear. Big ones. And yet he managed to keep them to himself.”

Austin: [seeking a happy medium] “I’ll just put them next to her.”

Me: “Keep them to yourself or you’re going to lose them. I’ll… separate you from your balls.”

Austin put them away, back in his pants, and proceeded to stare out the window. He’d normally suck his thumb in the car and fall into a sort of coma, but he can only do that when he has Brown Bear, and Brown Bear was in Robin’s car. We like having Brown Bear around because it keeps him quiet. It’s like doping him up, so that car rides with him are kind of like to transporting cargo.

Austin: “Mommy? Can I take my balls to school on Monday?”

Robin: “No.”

Austin: “But I really want to.”

Robin: “Why?”

Austin: “I want to show them to Veronica and play with them.”

Robin: [turning around] “All right, give me those things.”

1. Vacation totally rules and that we should honestly never have to suffer through the indignity of non-vacation time ever. I don’t say this in a short-sighted, oblivious-of-that-annoying-oh-life-must-go-on axiom; I say it as a fact, fully cognizant that it would mean we’d never get anything done and that we’d all just bliss out drinking piña coladas and other drinks with umbrellas and shit in them 24/7 and reading novels and picking sand out of our cracks. I mean honestly, who the hell cares? So some reports wouldn’t get filed. And so we wouldn’t earn any money. We’d just live on the beach and run out of money and turn into bums and we’d never shower and we’d stink and we’d walk into Bloomingdales (probably attracted by the shiny things) and these fancy people would pass out from our body odor and then we’d fall asleep on the perfume table and that would even out the smell, and the only real problem would be that we’d owe like ten grand for spilled and broken perfumes but you could never sue us because we wouldn’t have any concept of money and where the fuck are you going to send the court papers? To the beach? That’s retarded. There’s no mail on the beach.

2. We’re destroying the world. Not by polluting it or raping it, but by making fish super-intelligent.

I thought about the latter when I was sitting in this low little beach chair under a giant umbrella reading House of Leaves again and this snake swims up onto the sand with a fish in its mouth. The snake parks himself and proceeds to try and work this small catfish down his throat.

I’m watching this, fascinated. I mean, not because a snake just swam up on the beach and not just because a snake manages to tread water without any arms or legs AND keep his head above water AND look cool doing it, but because he’s pretty much got zero shame about doing all of this right in front of me and my mom and stepdad and brother and sister.

It’d be like if you’re in the otherwise-empty food court of a mall and some woman walked right up to you, sat down across from you, and started to breastfeed a baby. Or like if a you were in a lawyer’s office and some fat guy in a torn Def Leppard T-shirt with a wallet chain sat on your lap and ate a hoagie. Or like this time that my dad and I were in an airport laughing about this sound file he had on his computer that said, “Can you ever see a woman eating a banana and NOT think about a blowjob?” when this old lady sits down next to us, eats a banana, and promptly leaves. True story.

But there was more on top of the snake’s total lack of social decorum. While everyone is marveling over this snake’s ability to eat this fish whole, I’m marveling at this fish’s ability to get caught. In the water, where fish are supposed to be at home. By a fucking snake.

“So how does a snake catch a fish, anyway?” I asked aloud.

“They’re fast,” said my stepfather.

“But not that fast. I mean, we watched him swim in. And fish are a lot faster.” I was thinking of my earlier experiment trying to catch minnows for my son. Every step we took, the fish scattered. After several hours, we had caught four minnows, two of which died instantly. We probably caught those two because they were having tiny heart attacks, and we caught the other two because they wandered into these tiny little nets we were using.

The ones we caught were old, dying, or stupid, in other words.

So how did a snake catch a catfish? Probably stopped to ask the snake for directions. Or maybe the snake told him he was the winner of an internet lottery. The smart fish were all, “Hey, Jimmy, you don’t want to dick around with that black thing over there.” But he was all, “Pro wrestling is real,” and then it was over while the remaining fish went back home to watch Masterpiece Theater and drink port.

Same thing goes when a fish is caught by a shiny lure on the end of a fishing line. It’s the stupid fish that get it. All this time, we think we’ve been building better fishing equipment, but we’re just catching more and more of the stupid fish. The ones who would get caught if you tossed a snare trap in the water and baited it with a Cheeto.

We’re helping fish evolve. And it’s not going to be pretty. Because as we catch more and more of the stupid fish and remove them from the gene pool, this situation is only going to get worse.

Each time some stupid fish get eaten or caught, the smart ones swim home and lay a cluster of eggs and pass on smart genes, and then those fish go out and the dumb ones get eaten and so it repeats, over and over again, each generation getting smarter and smarter and smarter until they’re quoting Wordsworth and building flying supermarines to explore the air world at night and creating weird water probes with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s face in it like in that movie The Abyss and I’M FUCKING TELLING YOU WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM and there’s an underworld lair of superfish down there just waiting to attack. Possible targets? I’m thinking Arthur Treacher’s or Long John Silver’s.

You just think about that for a moment. Think about it the next time you go in the water, and decide if you want fish with giant fish brains that pulsate with genius fish thoughts severing your feet with their superfish fishrays.

Think about that the next time you go fishing, if you assume it’s all innocent. Think about how you’re leading this world to a kind of Planet of the Fish complete with fish armies and a fish Dr. Zaius and the Statue of Liberty buried in the sand while Young Charleton Heston is all like, “YOU MANIACS! YOU BLEW IT UP!”

Think about that, you monster. If you can.

This is an old post that I’m re-issuing for your reading pleasure. I’m moving the site to a different server this weekend and that’s a big pain in the ass, so my effort in moving the site replaces my effort in writing a new post. See the great things I do for you? Yet you never call.

————

During my freshman and sophomore years in college, I lived in a high-rise dorm at the Ohio State University. It was a twenty-something-story building with microscopic windows which were bolted shut. Floors 1-15 were administrative offices. The dorm floors, 16 and up, were composed of eight-person suites — four rooms of two, arranged around a common den and a common bathroom. Freshman year, we lived on the 20th floor. The next year, most of the same group of eight guys moved up to 21. We got our mail from boxes on 15. And mail, of course, went down the Chute.

My roommate, Ben, started it. For some reason, about a third of the mail in the box was for me, a third was for Ben, and a third was for Oberman Shakrobort. I think I might have known who Oberman was (my British calculus professor called role aloud, and when he wasn’t saying decidedly English things like “Bob’s your uncle,” he was stumbling over a name that sounded like “Oberman”), but Ben didn’t know Oberman at all. So when we got in the elevator to go up from 15 to 20, Benny slid Oberman Shakrobort ’s letters through the slot below the door, sending them to the bottom of the elevator shaft.

He always gleefully announced: “Down the Chute!”

And on it went, throughout our entire freshman year: four or five pieces of mail a week, every week. Ben so enjoyed the sounds of the letters flitting their way down through the cables and pulleys (they skittered and hopped with a sound like whispers) that he soon found that his down-the-Chute needs could no longer be satisfied by Oberman Shakrobort’s mail alone. Our own junk mail could not, of course, join Oberman‘s in the undoubtedly huge pile at the bottom (we might get busted that way!), so the Chute became Benny’s all-purpose trash can.

When fliers were tacked to our door, Benny walked with them to the elevator and said, “Down the Chute!”

When the trash can got full, Benny called the elevator and said, “Down the Chute!”

And when the cafeteria complained that students were stealing silverware and keeping it in their rooms for personal use, and then asked people to return it, Benny said, “Down the Chute!”

“Jeez, Ben,” someone (I think it was Tom) said as the flimsy spoon cacophonously made its way to the pile of Oberman’s mail at the bottom, “don’t you think that might be dangerous?”

“Fah-Q,” said Ben in his personal code. “Down the Chute!”

And then went the fork and knife.

Tom and Andy, the nerdiest of the rest of us nerds, began to study the Chute. They cracked open an audiocassette and tore the full spool from its innards. Andy grasped the free end of the ribbon winding off of the spool’s end and held it above the Chute. The two engineers-to-be then paused to calculate how long it would take the spool to unwind as it fell, accounting for various physical characteristics of the spool, like rotational inertia and angular momentum. Their calculations complete (and yes, they did write out actual calculations), they dropped the spool while holding the end. Somewhere below, it finally reached its end and dangled from twenty floors up.

“The Chute is deep,” Andy announced.

I roomed with Ben again the following year. Since we had a new address and mailbox, Oberman Shakrobort no longer provided us with Chute fodder. Ben was forced to improvise.

“The lunch tray will not fit down the Chute,” I told him.

“Nor would it be advisable,” Matt added.

The tray did fit. It fit very noisily. For days, people were talking about the “ruckus in the elevator shafts.” Ben laid off for a while, allowing Andy a chance to abuse the two elevators.

A lot of people don’t know that if you stick nails into a pickle, wrap the stripped end of a lamp cord around them, and then plug it into the wall, the pickle will buzz noisily and glow in the dark. Fortunately, Andy did know this. I have artistic black and white photos to prove it, his face lit with an eerie glow over a yellow-hot vegetable. After Andy electrocuted a pickle, seducing from it the fine aroma of burnt plastic, he would stick a string in one end and hang it at face-height in the middle of the elevator car.

“A fine thing,” I told him, gazing at the blackened turd in the middle of the elevator. We offered no explanation. We simply reached inside the car, hit all of the buttons, and sent the pickle on a round-trip tour of the dorm’s floors.

I can only imagine what people thought when the elevator dinged and the hanging turd greeted them wordlessly, like an accusation. When it made it to the ground floor, where the ID-checkers were doing their halfhearted duties at the doors, our phone rang.

“Andy Baker,” said someone that neither Andy nor anyone else knew. “Get that thing out of the elevator.” Apparently, Andy’s reputation preceded him.

After a while, Ben returned to the chute. Others got in on it.

“You don’t want to drop that huge fluorescent lightbulb down there,” our resident advisor told us, coming upon a sinister group poised above the Chute.

“We do,” Ben corrected him. “But it won’t fit.”

This isn’t a Photoshop job or a clever fake. This is a legit, fo-sho five-leaf clover I found the other day in my in-law’s hayfield while my son was being all manly by wading through the tall grass and picking flowers. I have to figure something big is bound to happen.

And yes, lo and behold, the other day it all started coming together when I got an email from a Mr. Ian Palmer (or, as the “From” line of his message read, “ian.palmer ian.palmer,”) in London. Here’s what it said:

The email went on to explain that this Thompson guy didn’t have any living family or whatever, so they got together at the bank and (and I quote), “It is therefore upon this discovery that I and two other officials in this department now decided to make business with you and release the money to you.”

Oh, snap. Me out of everyone on the planet. This kind of thing only happens when you’ve got some serious luck o’ the Irish. I would have been a fool to ignore it, so I decided to answer it, providing the personal stats that Mr. palmer ian palmer had asked for. I slightly modified them to fit what I perceived to be Mr. Palmer’s ideal demographic.

The next day, I woke up to find that Ian (ian.palmer ian.palmer) had answered my message. I was in business!

Well, I didn’t want to miss out on a once in life time opportunity.

The email went on to say that I should follow up with the transaction relentlessly to enable them to actualize it soon. Apparently, Ian’s client’s entire family lose their life’s, leaving the estate with no body to claim is balance. No body? Shit. That’s scary.

He went on to assure me that this transaction was all legal and legitimate and that he assured personally that “the funds actually exist.” Nowhere, however, was it explained why, out of all of the people on the face of the Earth, he chose an obscure retired union carpenter from Ohio to receive the funds. I’m just lucky, I guess.

The email concluded with:

Okay, sweet. I figured less was more, so I hobbled over to the computer using my cane and typed:

24 hours later, Ian responded, punctual as always. He said:

Oh, awesome. I was totally able to forget that despite his use of words like “actualize,” he can’t manage to fucking hold the Shift key down when typing an I.

So a little further down, I find out about my legal representation. I could only hope that he was as needlessly verbose, grammatically incorrect, and unnecessarily jargony as my new buddy Ian. Here’s what Ian had to say about him:

Ian then reminded me again that Pete doesn’t know that I didn’t pay my own legal bill. I figured this had some significance. They got together over fish and chips in a tea shop or some shit and Ian was like, “I finally found a guy willing to take all of this cash off of our hands. Sigh!” And Peter was like, “Jolly good.” And then Ian was like, “He’s a retired carpenter from Ohio.” And Peter was like, “That’s fully logical. Great show!”

Here’s more from that email:

So now I’m not supposed to talk to my bank, but that’s cool because they don’t know who my bank is yet.

And apparently we’re heading off into enemy territory or something. Or like, freeing the slaves. Something important, anyway.

So then I wrote back,

But then about an hour or so later, I realized my reply was pretty light so I sent him this:

It took another day or two until I heard from the lawyer (or “barrister,” right? I think they still wear those poofy wigs sometimes or something), a Mr. Peter Johnson, who wrote:

Ah, we get down to it. I didn’t want to give him the details just yet, so I decided to make him work for it.

But I wanted the money, so I needed an excuse that made sense. I tried to think like a senile retired carpenter, and so wrote:

I figured Pete would forgive my bigotry and the fact that I didn’t actually give a cell number because the people who respond to these messages in earnest surely say weirder shit.

But this was disappointing. After a while, I hadn’t heard from Peter. I was beginning to think I wouldn’t see my millions! But I figured it was worthwhile to email him again:

And still nothing. That was a few weeks ago.

This morning, I decided that whatever semi-literates are behind these things must not like to weasel answers out of people who are less than forthcoming. Maybe it’s a percentage game, and if one in fifty thousand just sends their account info, that’s who they go with.

So I figured I should give him what he wanted.

I have to tell you, I’m not optimistic. Five leaf clover or no, I’m starting to think I’m not going to see my money. My wife won’t get to go to Dollywood, but that may have something to do with the fact that I wrote early on that she was dead. Oops.

I do hope he writes back this time. He may suspect that 452 isn’t my actual account number, and when I get befuddled trying to find it, he may tell me to just call my bank. If he does, he has another thing coming. If I don’t trust my homosexual grandson with my money, I sure as hell don’t trust those Jews at the bank.

My son Austin, who was coloring, said, “Why are you covering The Bean?”

“She thinks it’s funny.”

And man, did she. Cackling, running, bouncing off of objects, cackling some more. At this point, the dogs started to chase her and bite her. She laughed harder and ran faster and it occurred to me that this probably wasn’t the safest endeavor. So I chased her, caught her, rearranged the babushka so that it looked more like a giant pink wig instead of a shroud, and sat back again, satisfied.

Austin said, “What’s wrong with that Bean?”

“I don’t know. Whatever it is, she gets it from your side of the family.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

So I decided to get my Flip video camera out before this spectacle ended. Unfortunately, neither of my children perform well for the camera. What was hilarious usually becomes mildly amusing, and some sort of misguided shenanigans typically occur. Austin used to chase the camera and I’d have to pedal backward and then hide in order to tape him, like a nature photographer trying to capture jungle apes.

So this time, on video, I put the pajamas over Sydney’s head. And this time, of course, she sauntered off without interest or hurry, totally ruining my video. Then Austin darted out in front of her and announced, “I’m going to pull them over her head.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Haha!”

“Hey! Don’t do that!”

“Haha!” And on goes the shroud.

The Bean accelerated, rounding a corner and tottering wildly like an SUV trying to make a tight turn. She was cackling like an asylum inmate as she headed toward a punch bowl we had lying on the floor in a box in the dining room for some reason. She hit the box, fell forward, and ran into a chair. Then she cried, loudly, and I had to swoop in.

So of course, immediately I’m all mad at Austin and have forgotten that I myself had her running around with the PJs over her head earlier.

I rounded on Austin. “Why did you do that? I told you not to do that.”

“She likes it.”

“She can’t see. I told you not to do it. Right after I told you not to do it, you did it. What’s up with that?”

“She thinks it’s funny.”

“She fell. She runs into things when she can’t see. You know that.”

“It doesn’t hurt.” Sulking now, defensive.

“Yes it does.”

“No it doesn’t.”

So naturally, I have to win this hypocritical argument with a 4-year-old, and the only way to do so is to be more hypocritical.

“So why don’t you try it?”

Now, we have no open steps in our house, and as he’s draping the pajamas over his own head, I’m already starting to follow him to make sure he doesn’t stumble over anything. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want him to walk into a wall or two.

“This is fun!”

He’s got his hands out, feeling for walls, and I’m pretty sure he can see through the pajama material. Cheater.

“Go faster.”

So now he’s running with perfect agility around all of the obstacles in the living room, darting around the coffee table, laughing, and finally he does run into me but I’m a reasonably soft encumbrance and all he does is flop backward, laughing more.

So he pulls off the blindfold and says, “See?”

So because I have to win this, I squat down and tell him all about how he could have hurt his sister and that if he does it again, he’s going into Time Out.

And so he starts crying. Like, way over the top. Heads back to the table and resumes coloring, still crying, putting on this big drama. “Why are you yelling at me?” and all of that. Meanwhile, The Bean has fully recovered from her trauma and has gone off to retrieve her pacifier.

Now, my mom got her this pacifier blanket thingy, so the pacifier is attached to this big blankie and when she walks around with the pacifier in her mouth, it’s like she’s wearing a very airy apron on her front as the whole works swings pendulously from side to side. Around the time Austin begins to settle down, she saunters past him on the laminate wood floor and uses it to performs a pratfall worthy of Jerry Lewis.

The blankie slips and falls to the laminate floor, one foot steps on it, and she immediately rotates 90 degrees in the air and lands on her back. And resumes crying.

So now Austin is blurting, “I didn’t do it!”

“I know you, didn’t do anything.”

But now he’s back into his theatrics. I calm one; I calm the other. I sit down at the kitchen table with him.

When this all began, I was trying to answer an email. Like, a quick answer. But every time I started, Sydney would come into my office and pick up all my papers, so I moved my Macbook out onto the kitchen table. Between all of these shenanigans, I’m typing a word or two to just try and answer the damn email. And for some reason, Austin likes to sit beside me and color when I “work” like this. So as his drama subsides, that’s where we end up once again.

I type two more words.

The Bean begins to circle the kitchen table and nears the dog food. Because she’s really big on trying to eat it, I keep a close watch. She passes without incident.

I type a few more words.

On the second pass, things don’t go as well. Because she’s put the pendulous paci-blankie back in her mouth, she’s one big moving violation and never watches where she’s going. One foot steps in one dog food dish (empty) and the other foot goes right into the other (not empty). Everything up-ends, Bean falls to the floor, and dog food goes everywhere. And then both of the kids start crying again.

Me to Austin: “What?”

Austin: “She fell!”

Me: “O… kay.”

By the end of the evening, I still haven’t finished this one quick email. So when Austin is in the bathroom — always an extended endeavor when number two is involved (not “Number Two” a.k.a Wil Riker from Star Trek) — I sit back down and finish it. Next to me is this coloring masterpiece Austin has been working on throughout the day.

I’m just closing my laptop when he comes out and he starts to sit down and finish his art. But by now it’s 8:30, well past bedtime.

“Not tonight, kiddo. You can finish it tomorrow.”

And he says literally this; I know because I wrote it down: “But Daddy, I wanted to color while you were working, but I spent all my time pooping.” A pause. “That’s no fun.”

Still, rules are rules. He climbs up onto my lap. We sit there for a minute.

And I say, “Hey, I’m sorry I yelled at you about putting the pajamas over The Bean. I shouldn’t have done it either. We can’t do that, okay? And you especially shouldn’t do something after I’ve told you not to.”

“Okay, Daddy.”

The kid gets it. He’s smart. Later, he told my mom on the phone that he wants to come up to visit her so that Mom and Dad can get some peace and quiet. He’s unable to explain what “peace” is, except that it’s like a piece of something. Like maybe pie.

Right now, as I’m writing this at 7am, it’s quiet in the house.

I wonder if I’m allowed to have peace for breakfast.