Creepy Trick or Treat, 1976

On Halloween, 1976, my mom dropped us off to trick or treat down Summerdale Avenue. We lived in Chicago IL, on the northwest annex close to O'Hare airport. It was hard to t-or-t on my street (Catalpa) because we lived in an area full of 4-6 family apartment units, so we'd go to single-family homes a few streets over to beg for candy.

The night was memorable. I was with my sister and friend Robert. We worked our way down that entire street, leaving no house unviolated.

The residents of one house would not answer the door. We heard them, there was considerable tussling and disturbance on the other side. We rang the bell repeatedly, banged on the door, made a lot of noise. It seemed like someone was trying to get to the door.

A man finally answered and there was blood on the stairs next to the door. He told us sternly to go away and we did.

We chalked up the experience to someone having a medical problem. My mom said that someone was probably sick and throwing up blood. The whole ordeal diffused and although we talked about it at school, we didn't think anything much about it.

*********

One year later police would harvest the remains of 27 men and boys from a house on Summerdale Avenue. They were killed by John Wayne Gacy, a local contractor that would seduce them into coming over before they were raped and tortured, before they were killed and buried in the structure of the house.

My sister and I were paralyzed by the news and remembered the Halloween instance a year before. We didn't and still don't know if that house was Gacy's, but it was his street. I maintain to this day that we were on the wrong side of the street, but I could be wrong. Was someone trying to escape bound-and-gagged anal violation by an evil construction worker on the other side? Might we have been next under other circumstances?

Time gave a freaky situation a sinister twist, and I realized that I may have possibly been face-to-face with the construction clown that killed kids.

Not Your Fault, Jeb

Unlike his stupid brother that would rather sacrifice national security and destroy his party’s influence before admitting a mistake, Jeb Bush is busy apologizing to all of the Floridiots that didn't bother the prepare for a hurricane. He's claiming culpability for the large lines and short supplies of ice, food and water.

If I'm not mistaken, Hurricane Wilma was spawned from nature about 10 days before ravaging southern Florida. During this time it destroyed two Mexican cities and was the only damn thing on television. Warnings were issued for days, it took forever to get here and the predictions were spot-on for the entire period for once. Every projection, every map, every forecast showed it wacking Cancun and then shooting straight through Naples, FL. It did not disappoint, arriving precisely where expected.

I'm in Florida too, and got my ass kicked by Jeanne and Francis (that sounds so gay) last year so I can comment. We were told to prepare, get ready. Water comes out of that shiny thing in the kitchen by the sink, so it can be stockpiled in anything without a hole. Many foodstuffs can be obtained and stored, not everything has to come out of a bucket or bag. Is the governor or FEMA responsible to put the stuff in your damn cabinet? No. If everyone would simply take care of themselves then the government and FEMA could assist those that are unable to do so (the elderly, the poor) more effectively.

On a positive note, in Everglades County 60% of the homes now have electrical service. That's 10% better than before the storm!

Bottom line, we better get nervous when Republicans are copping to poor performance in areas where WE should be accountable. Now they, like the Democrats, want to guide us from cradle to grave. The problem is, their rules and demands for such protection will be much more scary. Zeig heil.

Thanks, Rosa.

Rosa Parks reminds us that we can all make a very important difference if we stick to our principles and fight for what is right. She reminds us that it is critical for us to make decisions around what is just, not what is convenient or comfortable.

The woman of small stature dared to challenge the established convention that blacks should relinquish their bus seats to whites. She was a giant, standing firm and undergoing arrest for her crime. Keep in mind that she was arrested by good white Christians that loved Jesus and prayed to him daily. Remember that someone's holier-than-thou Christian decisions may be bad ones; possibly even contradictory to the teachings of Christ.

Her legacy lives, and there is at least one thing that we can all do in her honor. We can not tolerate intolerance. Racial, religious, ethnic, you name it... discrimination is discrimination and if a small minority woman can have the cojones to stand firm against it, so should each and every one of us. We've come a long way, but we have a long way to go in Amerikkka. I've been silent when I wanted to speak because I didn't want to start a problem. I let it happen in front of me. No more. What would Rosa do?

White supremicists still thrive, black supremisists abound and religious supremisists are everywhere. Fight them, fuck with them, make it impossible for them to spread their venom. It sounds contradictory. It is important to let them say what they want to or worship as they want to... that's fine, that's Amerikkka. But when their positions are used to squelch others with different beliefs, or when their philosophies are marketed as science or fact, that is where it crosses the line.

Rosa, you can have my seat anytime.

Combat Illiteracy

Today I got a note in my email.

It said that a local illiteracy support group was forming to help me in the event I could not read.

I think it is going to be a very lonely meeting.

Willl someone get fired for this?

New Socks.

To the average person, new socks are no big deal. To me, it is a major financial outlay and reason of great consideration.

Today I thank a 5-foot tall Mexican guy named Rodrigo for introducing me to the world of womens' high-performance hosiery. Over the past 2 years I have been trying to buy new socks. Seriously, this is a major undertaking because I have to like them (materials, fit, durability) and I want all of them to be the same. Bad socks are like a headache, a persistent problem that lowers my net performance. Socks are the root of stable success.

I looked in stores... retail socks are too thick and wooly and too expensive. I wanted paper thin, sheer socks, hopefully spun of a natural fabric. However, they can't be too thin, they need to be a solid color.

I looked on Ebay.... Sure you can buy socks cheap there, but I freaked out when I saw some guy's big dumb feet in dirty socks, trying to sell them to fetish weirdos. I could not stop thinking of a freaky guy with a sock on his snoot soaked in chloroform sucking in fumes from a dirty stocking obtained from on-line auction while he was Burpin' the Worm.

Finally I was trapped in San Diego at a mall. While my wife tried on shoes in a fancy shoe store, I asked the shoe flunky if they sold socks. He showed me the men'socks. All too thick. He suggested that I check the womens' socks, and I did...

They were thin and stretchy, soft and absorbent, a cotton-lycra blend that maintained their density even while stretched... nirvana.

I asked if they would fit, and Rodrigo told me, "I have them on right now".

I bought one set of three and wore a pair each day, for three days.

On the fourth day you could have found me at the Fashion Valley's "Aldo", buying 3 more sets of 3 pairs of socks. I now own 12 pairs, that's 24, women's socks.

I am comfortable with this. Their healthy sheen and lycra durability are inherently manly, despite being crafted for the fairer sex. It is my little secret. I passed out drunk with them on the other night and was badgered into lovin' escapades with the woman. She found it exceptionally fulfilling, and I wonder if the gentle lycra squeeze on my extremedies kept my circulation pooled to the groin.

I still favor boxers to briefs and probably not going to explore the underwearic treats that women's clothing offers. I've managed to deal with wearing chick socks and I think it ends there. I guess we'll see.

Worst Boobs Ever

A recent entry on the Bucky Four Eyes Cotillion spoke of a geriatric Steppenwolf fan that felt compelled to unwind her drooping grey flesh blobs at a 2005 Steppenwolf reunion concert. Her description brought back an image I managed to suppress for 8 years now, suppressed for 80% of a decade by post-traumatic stress syndrome. Thanks Bucky.

The year was 1997 and I lived in Chicago’s near-west side. I lived in a seedy, scummy area where rent was cheap, gunshots were common and wandering around the neighborhood businesses always brought something you never saw before. A trip to the video store one night would be no exception.

If you asked the 10-year-old Schmootzie what he’d think about a lady walking into a video store with a see-thru shirt on, he would have given non-qualatative, unbridled enthusiasm. “Boobs good!” But the sight that was seen left me scarred with a grasp of a mammary deformity that had no business in public display.

I was in the video store, appropriately so called, as they had one video. As I stood looking at the movie boxes the bell on the door rang and in she walked…

She best resembled Shirley Hemphill, the waitress from “What’s Happening”, only more overweight, more unkept. She wore stretchy pants and a garment that may best be thought of as ethereal-- a mesh top that was completely see through.

There was nothing spared for the imagination. Hanging from her chest were two enormous bags, two sacks of slush that started in the center of her chest and clung tight to the contour of her ample belly down to her belt-metropolitan area. One went to the right, one went to the left, drooping semi-gelatinous udders drained of any pertitude by an apparent decade of nursing. They flanked a cavernous navel, and at the end of each bag, two feet below their origin, they terminated in a mild discoloration that hallmarked nipplage. Each areola was the size of a pancake, and the nipple proper was a pencil eraser at the end, pointing directly at the floor.

The most amazing part of the display was that either breast was no more than a half-inch thick at any point. She could give herself a monthly lump exam with a rolling pin.

The second most amazing part of the display was that she apparently thought that she had the goods; and her “sexy” goobags were worth display.

I couldn’t stop soaking in this National Geographic moment. It was like two locomotives hitting head on at full speed… so ugly that I had to watch.Maybe the best part is that I found a new definition for bad boobs that raised the bad bar so high that everything else I ever saw was nowhere near as evil. That includes the stuff on guys.

Still, that image has now been burned into my synapses and will plague me until I get to have it erased by a brain-eating disease. I say to the 10 year old Schmootzie, “Be careful of what you wish for”.

San Diego

I sit on a terlet, typing via my hotel's wi-fi. I have been unable to write because I have been scrambling to get out of town, leaving Florida for California.

Stuff is weird here too, only with better restaurants.

It is 1:06 local time, which means it is 4:06 in my internal clock.

I had a burrito with potatoes in it.

Beer good here too.

More on tomorrow.

Banned Blood

The letter said that my donated blood tested positive for hepatitis B, and that I was permanently eliminated from the donor pool.

I used to give blood on a monthly basis. I called them the "van-pires" the group of phlebotomy phlunkies that drove to various places to take blood in the self-proclaimed "BLOODMOBILE". I'd squeeze out a pint and then they'd give me a free t-shirt, an orange juice and a muffin. What's not to like? Sometimes they had pizza!

In my life I've easily given 20 gallons, supplying transfusions everywhere with my mildly uncommon bloodtype. Then I get the letter... The hepatitis B letter.

I freak out because I think that I've got the Pam Anderson disease and that my eyes will turn yellow from a virus and not drinking-associated liver failure. Turns out that HepB is not a huge deal if you can tackle it with the immune system.

I visit my doctor, she repeats the test, no free pizza, no t-shirt, no HepB, never had it.

I called our blood donor center and told them-- I faxed them the results. They don't care. Once you are eliminated you are gone for good. I can kiss goodbye the free pizza and the stream of "I Gave" t-shirts.

I still am in the Bone Marrow Donor Database so at least they'll take that stuff. No free pizza or t-shirts, just a massive pain in the pelvis.

Luckily I can still get my bloodletting through leeches, applied by a well-equipped barber over in St. Augustine. Seems a shame the ample fluids of a healthy volunteer are not wanted.

Required Listening 2005

Tonight I became inebriated on Martin's Deluxe 12 year old age Whiskey. I drank myself stupid and drove as fast as I could to the record store. This was a rare occasion that I would fork over the $13 to buy what the kids call a "CD"... a digital recording of music pressed into a small record that I can play on my computer.

By the way, I'm still wasted... thta's my skull.

I bought Nashvillle Pusssy's new one "Get Some". I am born again, again, for the 5th time.

I was born again with rock when I saw KISS on mushrooms, then I pooped my pants at a DEVO concert. Then I saw the 'Nug in his prime, then UFO, Foghat, Jane's Addiction, Butthole Surfers, Suicidal Tendencies and Circle Jerks, then I went 20 years without being inspired. Somewhere in there I saw an excellent Descendents show, Hagfish, Wesley Willis and Causey Way. None of them left me to soil myself, but the spider puckered, if you know what I'm sayin'.

If you like Zep, AC/DC, Scorps, etc., then go find youself a Nashville Pussy CD. The new one kills and you will approve. It is music to take your clothes off to if you are a stripper or trucker. Listen, crack a pabst and smell your pits. There's symmetry to be found. It is a 50 minute string of tunes to spin while you gut a deer, chainsaw a tree or bang the ol' lady.

It is the most inspired CD I have heard since NOFX's "War on Errorism"-- a piece of Americana that beacons the end like bird flu and dirty bombs. It is what I want to hear as it all goes up in a fireball. Bon Scott would be proud.

Frey Farms Fallacy

The commercial shows rual America and tells the heartwarming story of a woman that picked a pumpkins and sold them to a local Wal-Mart store at the age of 8. The Wal-Martians were apparently so thrilled with her pumpkin product that soon her brothers came home from college and joined the effort. Years later they sell millions of carvin' grouds to the giant retailer, and they allegedly represent a smiling, happy beacon of Wal-Mart's kind heart, a clear example of Wal-Mart support for the farmer and America. Insert waving flag image and eagle face here.

My job is to improve the nation's food supply through biotechnology. Farmers traditionally opposed to GMO technology are now very well educated in its potential and intelligent enough to see through the fear-mongering. They embrace my efforts as a likely way to save their jobs and sustain American agriculture in the long term. We are currently devising genetic alterations to help mitigate plant disease, improve quality, and make the products easier to harvest and ship.

Invariably, when I ask a grower "What is the one problem I should focus on to help you profitably produce your product?" the answer is, every time, "Get rid of Wal-Mart".

Wal-Mart is one of essentially four places where growers can sell their plant products, and they are the most steadfast in their price demands. They have plenty of farmers in Central America and China that can produce the same crops pretty cheap, and low price is all Wal-Mart is about. They tell farmers here that they'll buy crop X for $Y dollars a unit. Take it or leave it, let it rot. The cost to grow crops in America is high. Massive amounts of crops are lost to disease because we can't use the deadly chemicals growers in other countries depend upon. Labor in the U.S. is expensive, even with low-wage migrant workers. Restrictions, limits, laws, and protocols make farming in America a constant battle for a thin margin.

Wal-Mart is a key player in the price fixing and offers growers slightly more than it costs the grower to produce the product. The growers have to take it, or their product will rot on the dock.

This is not the happy pastoral presented in Frey Farms propaganda. A quick on-line check shows that the Frey Farms story is credible. However, from my experience they are being paraded as the example of farmer-retailer synergy, but they are absolutely an exception to the rule. If pumpkins weren't so heavy it probably would be cheaper to ship them in from abroad, and Wal-Mart wouldn't give Frey Farms a second look. Just wait!

Wal-Mart is a main player in the grocery industry and they decide the price. Long gone are the days where a grower could shop their product out to 100 potential buyers and sell to the one with the best offer. Instead, they are slaves to corporate giants that buy cheap and sell to the consumer at a comparable price, pocketing the profits and using them to forward company expansion and even fund political agendas.

Please think wisely before shopping at Wal-Mart. The job you save may be your own.

(If you want more specifics or details please email me. I'd like to keep my real identity detached from this via search engines)

Domino's Delivers Distortion!

If you believe that kids need more science and less exposure to the lies and distortions based in religious idiocy, then stop buying pizza from Domino's. I haven't eaten a piece from Domino's since I delivered for those sons-of-bitches back in the 80's. I quit when I realized that my hard work and the destruction of my car were financing endeavors that I deplore. It turns out that Tom Monaghan, Domino's founder and CEO, is a complete jesus crispy and a right-wing goof. He is an anti-abortion activist and a societal engineer wannabe. In fact, he will finance a new university in Florida and adjacent town where there'll be no condoms and television. More on this in the near future.

I'll first give him credit where due. He is a wealthy pizza magnate that could pocket all of his cash. However, he performs an admirable amount of philanthropy. For this he should be commended, in general. If he wants to fund directives to limit adults' access to contraception then that is his twisted prerogative.

Now he has crossed the line. He founded the Thomas More Legal Centre, an organization that is out of it's mind. They feel that Christians are "under attack" because the courts have decided that religious stuff like the Ten Commandments does not belong in schools. They are against distribution of 'morning after' contraception (actually all contraception), human stem cell research and they certainly don't like the homos. A complete list is here .

It is a private organization, so they can do what they want and I really don't care. However, they have now crossed the line. It turns out that the Thomas More Legal Centre now is at the centre of the Intelligent Design (ID) movement, a crackpot scheme set to undermine the fundamental basis of scientific teachings. Essentially, ID supporters promote a theory that life is too complex to have happened on its own, so a magical entity must have started it. It is Creationism-lite, and claims to be a competing "theory" against evolution.

However, the legal experts of TMLC fail to realize that what they promote is not science, as it is not testable. It is an opinion, an unprovable philosophy that may be right, may be wrong, we'll never know. This watered down christian distortion cannot be taught as hard science.

You wonder why our kids are last in science and math in the developed world? They are getting their information from the wrong big thick book. Don't support this crap with your valuable pizza dollars.


Pizza is cooler than Jesus!

New York Braces for "Credible Threat"

NEW YORK -- The Bush Administration today announced that credible information suggests that terrorist attacks are imminent against subways.

I'm not going there for lunch!

Two Letters I Wrote to Save Grammar

Dear James Brown,

I know you are the undisputed Godfather of Soul, but I need to urge you to seriously reconsider the lyrics to "I Feel Good". "Good" is an adjective (a word that describes nouns). "Well" is usually an adverb (a word used to describe verbs). People often use "good" when they should use "well", especially in speech, and in this case, in song. Remember, do not use "good" to describe verbs.

I know you are as concerned about the flagrant misuse of language as I am. The children look to you as a pop icon, and I hope you will take the appropriate measures to change the title of your song to "I Feel Well".

Thank you and god bless,
Schmootzie


Dear Cheryl Crow,

I hope that I may peel you off of that cycling has-been long enough for you to seriously reconsider the lyrics to your song "A Change Would Do You Good". "Good" is an adjective (a word that describes nouns). "Well" is usually an adverb (a word used to describe verbs). People often use "good" when they should use "well", especially in speech, and in this case, in song. Remember, do not use "good" to describe verbs.

I know you are as concerned about the flagrant misuse of language as I am. The children look to you as a pop icon, and I hope you will take the appropriate measures to change the title of your song to "A Change Would Do You Well".

Thank you and god bless,
Schmootzie

I Accidentally Typed a "G"

G and F are right next to each other on the keyboard. Luckily a misplaced keystroke added a new term to my vernacular, a sister to last year's "Freedumb".

Recently while jotting down thoughts on my famous "Bush-Cheney Investment Portfolio" (I'll try to post it tomorrow) I typed a "G" at the beginning of "Freedom" to make it "Greedom". Before the spell checker could change it I preserved it into my personal dictionary.

I hence coined the term "Greedom", defined by the NWO Dictionary as corporate profiteering on national directives that should be inducing sacrifice.

Between Iraq and Katrina, I am absolutely sick about how much non-existent federal funding has gone to line the pockets of giant, well connected corporations that receive generous contracts for the asking. Cheney ran Haliburton Inc and still has substantial ties and interest to the company. Haliburton, via its subsidiaries Kellogg, Brown and Root, etc., is profiting massively from the national disasters in New Orleans and Iraq. You'd think a Vice President would desire to be a faithful steward of the country during a time of national emergency and direct a company to work for minimal/no profits. Instead it is time to slip our stupid national populace a terrorist ruffie and rape it like in a way that would make a Van der Sloot proud.

We won't even talk about how reprehensible it is to use military volunteers for the sake of greedom.

If you don't agree, check back tomorrow.