Reading Comes Alive!

Because I work nights, it's really hard to stay awake the nights I don't work.  Last night was one of those, so I thought I would do some reading.  I had already spent a few hours going through the Cornell Lab of Ornithology Handbook of Bird Biology, so I went back to one of my favorite books, Vernon Birkhead's Victimless Crimes and Hard Plots to Follow.  It's not Amazon.com, but you can suggest to Amazon here that you'd like them to carry it.

Last night I was reading the part where Pervis Sutpen has just escaped from prison and is trying to find his pet timber wolf, Jibjab.  Pervis knows that if he doesn't get to Jibjab who has the antidote around his collar he'll never get back to the fishing ship where Captain Bulkington is about to unknowingly steer the crew right toward the Straits of Pound.  Pervis, of course, is weighed down by the one-act plays that the prison guard who helped him escape had written and Pervis had promised to deliver to Timor, the traveling bard from the prison guard's home village, which Pervis doesn't yet know is also the home village of Rodney the blind arachnologist who prophecied that Pervis would never find love until he sees a hearse being dragged by a team of fainting goats.  And the whole time Pervis is complaining that the prison guard didn't write on both sides of the paper. 

As you can imagine, it's a pretty magical moment.

Saint Rick the Baptist

Sammy has been pretty excited because Saint Rick the Baptist is back at Arby’s.  A couple years ago Sammy was just an assistant manager at Arby’s, and the regular manager started sweating it because there was a man wearing a sandwich board at the street entrance of Arby’s, shouting about people going to hell.  The manager didn’t want to do anything about it besides pace.  Sammy volunteered to go tell the man to get off Arby’s property, so the manager told him to do it.  Sammy walked out there like he’d just won a prize.  The man asked Sammy if he knew about his soul, and he said, “Sir, please, I can't talk about what's in the secret sauce,” which kept the man quiet for a few seconds because he just didn’t know how to respond.

Sammy told him he’d have to stand in the middle of the street if he wanted to talk about people who were going to die.  Then Saint Rick the Baptist said Sammy didn't own the ground he walked on. Sammy said no, but Arby's did. Saint Rick the Baptist then pointed his finger in the air and said, "And Arby shall be the Lord’s!" Sammy thought that was the greatest thing he’d ever heard, and sometimes when he’s gambling with me and he gets a good roll of the dice, he’ll shout that.

Well, that day Sammy got Saint Rick the Baptist off the property but he came back the next day.  Sammy volunteered again, and walked out just as happy as the first day.  Saint Rick the Baptist asked Sammy if he was going to hell.  Sammy said, “Online I am,” which kept the man quiet for a few seconds because he just didn’t know how to respond.

Rachel always loved Saint Rick the Baptist, too.  She’d make Sammy call her whenever he showed up to Arby’s.  Sammy would have to promise to give Rachel time to get there before Sammy kicked him off the property.  Boyce and I couldn’t understand how you could sit and listen to someone like that.  Every time someone mentioned Saint Rick the Baptist Boyce would get this look in his eye and start imagining funny things he could throw at him from his van.  Sammy really wanted to throw pickle juice on him, that way when he told people they were going to hell, people would think, "Why is there so much dill in heaven?"  Rachel and Sammy liked talking to him.  Rachel wondered sometimes if he had a homosexual son somewhere, or if he was scared about how the world was different than he needed it to be, or if he was a performance artist who lived in a studio apartment that had furniture converted from urinals and toilets and upside down park benches, and whenever his cats would get hungry he'd print out the word IRONY and then cut it up into their bowls.

Well, yesterday, for the first time in a long time, Saint Rick the Baptist came back to Arby's and Sammy of course couldn’t call Rachel.  So he called me instead, and I went down there.  When I got there I asked him if he remembered Rachel, and he said, “Oh my...,” and then, like he was eating a pork chop, he said, "Yes.  She's going to hell."  I had to concentrate really hard on how bald eagles build nests so strong a human adult could sit in them, otherwise I would have gotten really upset.  He asked if I knew what hell was, and I repeated what Rachel told me was the only thing I ever needed to know about hell: “Yeah, it's both the name and dwelling place of the daughter of Loki, the Norse trickster god,” which kept the man quiet for a few seconds because he just didn't know how to respond.  Then Sammy kicked Saint Rick the Baptist off Arby's property, which felt great.  Later Boyce said he's not just talking anymore--he was going to stop throwing away pickle juice.  But I told Sammy he didn't need to call me anymore when Saint Rick the Baptist showed up.

Bart, No!

You may remember that in my first post on this blog I mentioned what a huge Packer fan I am.  Now, I'll be the first to admit I haven't been a lifelong Packer fan.  As you may expect, Rachel's influence had something to do with it.  She liked the Packers because she said the town owns the team rather than some rich family.  Also, she liked the fact that the team name was from a company in the canned meat field.  Whenever someone argues that the Packers are inferior to another sporting team, I always explain these two points of Rachel's.  Maybe if there were some teams named after birds I would be more willing to root for them, but until that happens, call me Vince Lombardozzi!

Well, I've just been informed that the Packers' beloved quarterback, Bart Farv (picture at right), has been traded to our archrivals, The Minnesota.  If I were still speaking with Rachel, she would see me spitting nails over this.  Of course, the question will be whether I root for Bart Farv when he plays against the Packers.  Rachel--if you could only hear me!--I'll always be a Packers fan.  Even though Green Bay has really done nothing to me and is marginally betraying me through its negligence, I will always have loyalty even at the expense of my own well-being.  If I had a football and a son I'd go out in the yard and tell him, "Go deep!"  Instead, I'm just throwing aluminum cans at my basement wall.  But you better believe I hit that wall every time!

I've asked Sammy and Boyce if maybe they'd like to make a road trip to Green Bay to see a game.  Boyce said he'd love to, and is going to do everything he can to get us tickets for when Minnesota and Favr come to Green Bay.  He said it would cost a lot of money, money that he certainly doesn't have, but he said it would be worth hearing me ask other Packer fans what they felt about Bart getting traded.

My dad and I never got a chance to go to football games.  My dad was best at staring and talking to things that can't talk back to him, like cars parked in two spaces or the rain or a dead bird on the side of the road that he always joked was "his only friend in the world."  Dad was a dreamer, all right.  At dad's funeral mom told me he finally got the only dream he ever had.  She let me come live with her since she was going blind anyway.  Besides, she said, my uncle would need someone to get high with.

Go Packers!

Cyrus Weighs In: Health Care

Since I hurt my rib I've been thinking a lot about dying, and therefore doctors, and therefore paying for them--and lo and behold Sammy says there's a bit of debate going on about how to pay for doctors. I tried to inform myself as best I could on the different aspects of the debate, and this is what I've found out so far through my internet research.

1. Under our current health care system, if you go to an emergency room and tell them you have no insurance but need to be treated, you will be shot. (Note: Some have noted that the hospital will pretend to treat you, but while you're anesthetized your organs will be harvested for illegal immigrants.)

Cyrus weighs in: No way, Jose!

2. Government management of Medicare and Medicaid is so bad, that when a pregnant woman delivers a child in a hospital without insurance, 50% of the time that child is fed to hungry Jews who live under insurance buildings in New York.

Cyrus weighs in: No one should eat babies, no matter what your religious beliefs are!

3. In Switzerland where the government runs health care, old people are fed to cats.

Cyrus weighs in: Cats have been known to eat their elderly owners when they die!

4. rifleman6847 reports on a YouTube comment board that his friend was traveling in Canada when he sprained his ankle. Since Canada's health system is so overcrowded, and since he had applied ice and compression immediately, his friend didn't even bother going to the hospital.

Cyrus weighs in: Ice and compression help reduce swelling!

5. If the government runs health care they will put caps on how much our lives are worth, negotiate how much to pay doctors for procedures, and ration health care, all while foreign investors indirectly control the money available.

Cyrus weighs in: Madness!

6. The Sleep Center has Blue Cross Blue Shield, and although I am part time and am not allowed to have it, I do know that Blue Cross currently puts caps on how much our lives are worth, negotiates how much to pay doctors for procedures, and rations health care, all while foreign investors indirectly control the money available.

Cyrus weighs in: Lunacy!

7. Comrade Obama didn't even want to come up with government health care until he got invited to Hugo Chavez's surprise birthday party where, when things were getting dull, they got out a Ouija board and contacted Stalin's ghost about what's the best way to bring back the Soviet Union.

Cyrus weighs in: I don't know who any of those people are, but Ouija boards are for entertainment purposes only!

8. If government runs health care poor people will have less retarded kids but more abortions!

Cyrus weighs in: When I get scared I pretend I'm a bird. Right now I'm a Ring-Billed Gull!

Marcel LeFarge and the Hockey Helmet

Two days ago I was going off-shift at the Sleep Center, and Rex Tugwell was just coming in. He told me that later in the day he and Marcel LeFarge were going to the widow Smolinsky's house to clear out some of her husband's stuff. The widow Smolinksy's husband had been dead for almost twenty years, so I asked Rex why she was just now giving away her husband's things, and Rex told me she had, for the first time, sat down with Marcel LeFarge.

Marcel LeFarge, despite the fact that he sounds like a top-hotted villain, is one of the doctors at the Sleep Center. Every single human being loves Marcel once they are convinced Marcel LeFarge is actually his real name. Marcel is originally from New Brunswick, Canada. He was a real smart kid in school, but didn't want to do anything with his brain until his other parts started to slow down. So for about eight years he was a sailor in different parts of the world. He was in Alaska, in the Middle East, and India, among other places. When he came home he went to medical school. The women at the Sleep Center say he was a horrible doctor, but he cured all his patients by charming them into living longer. He's like a seeing-eye dog: when you see him in person you just think everything in the world is great.

So the widow Smolinsky had spoken with Marcel LeFarge for a little bit and offered him everything. He said he'd be happy to go check things out, and Rex Tugwell said he'd go too because he's kind of a scavenger. I told Rex I'd go too because maybe there would be old records for Boyce, and he said, "Yeah, and naked bird calendars for you." This is stupid. Birds are always naked, in and out of calendars. Besides, what good is an old calendar? I hate Rex.

We went out there in Rex's car and Marcel asked me if I'd seen any owls out back of the Sleep Center. He asked me to tell him something he didn't know about owls, and I told him that the Latin word for owl was "bubo." The Great-Horned Owl, Rachel's favorite bird, was therefore bubo virginianus. Rex made me say it again. Bubo virginianus. Bubo virginianus. He made me slow down. Bubo. Virgin. I. Anus. He couldn't stop laughing. He would have laughed even harder if I had told him that in Greek bubo means groin. He asked me if the Great Horned-Owl was on the Virus Buttertree family crest, sitting on the shoulder of a man selling his daughters for some magic beans while his wife poisoned a well. I told him that if he cared to know it was Rachel's favorite bird. Things got quiet and I could tell Rex was thinking about cracking a joke. He didn't though, so the house key I was holding between my knuckles got put back in my pocket.

We spent a long time at the widow Smolinksy's. I found two great old jazz albums for Boyce, but that was about all. Rex got a bowling ball and a couple chairs, along with some old hockey gear. Marcel didn't get anything until he saw the widow Smolinsky wanted him to have something, so he asked if he could have an old picture of her and her husband, and I thought the widow Smolinsky was going to tear her dress right off.



On the way home Rex Tugwell put on the hockey helmet from the gear he got, and every time we'd stop at a red light he'd look to the car next to us and start licking the window. I don't know what people thought when they saw him do that. The last time he licked a window he saw he'd gotten the attention of an entire family in the car next to us. So to crank it up a notch he banged the helmet against the steering wheel. When he did that though, all the sudden earwigs started coming out of the helmet. Rex started to panic and just floored it right through the red light. Luckily there was no car in front of us or in the intersection. Marcel tried to reach over for the wheel but Rex was flailing around and screaming. I don't know how many earwigs can fit in a hockey helmet (note to self: could be the start of a great joke), but a whole bunch poured out of it. Rex, still flooring it, took both hands and tore the helmet off. The car veered to the right, jumped a curb, ran over a couple mailboxes, and then went right down into a ditch.

You'd think everything would get quiet in the ditch, but Rex was still screaming. He scrambled out of the car and then fell over. Marcel calmly got out and inspected the car, and then watched Rex roll around in the dirt. After you've been in a shipwreck in Alaska being in a ditch with a bunch of earwigs isn't a big deal.

As for me, I was holding Rex's bowling ball the whole time, and when we went into the ditch it hit against my side. I climbed out and Marcel asked if I was okay. I said I wasn't sure and pulled up my shirt to see if a rib was sticking out of my chest. None were, but when I tried to throw Rex's bowling ball into the weeds it hurt pretty bad. Rex was still rolling around and screaming. The family from the last car he licked the window for were at the top of the ditch staring. I don't really know what they were thinking, because they were clearly more frightened by us than what had happened to us. Marcel shouted up at them if they knew what the Latin name for a Great-Horned Owl was. "Tell 'em, Cyrus," he said, but the family had already got back in their car.

"The Widow Smolinsky's Electra Complex"

One of my favorite chronic patients, the widow Sara Smolinksy, came in this past week at the Sleep Center. She’s not one of my favorites because she’s particularly pleasant. In fact, I made the mistake of telling her how I feel about birds, and now every time I see her she tells me she’s twisted the heads off X number of pigeons since she’s last seen me. I have found that many people, once they find out how I feel about birds, immediately find great satisfaction in telling me bird-related horrible things they heard, they saw as kids, or they wished they could do to make me “break.” No one has ever made fun of my ears because they’re too busy talking about birds. If I ever have a child I will tell him to invent a hologram passion to divert all the barbs and arrows of this world.

From what I hear, the widow Smolinksy used to be a decent person, but living much of her adult life with her ageless father and his Torah-spouting dragonmouth sucked the goodness right out of her. She does, however, have some spectacular dreams because of her Father. Her dreams are like mythical giants. Some people dream dogs or robbers are chasing them, but Sarah dreams that God is chasing her. Jewish people believe God is a shapeshifter, therefore in the widow Smolinsky’s dreams God chases her in the form of an elephant, a walking house, or a clay statue that eats paper. Whenever God chases her he’s always carrying too much in his hands, and he has to keep stopping to rearrange his load. That’s the only reason she ever gets away. What he carries changes in each dream. Sometimes they’re skeletons, greeting cards, or baby dolls. Last week when the widow Smolinsky came she told me God, in the form of Gary Busey, was carrying hundreds of silver, Liberian 9/11 commemorative dollars.

The only person whose dreams were near as mythical as the widow Smolinsky’s were Rachel’s. In fact, it was because of the widow Smolinsky that Rachel first told me one of her dreams. I was at the Sleep Center having just finished a sketch I did of the widow Smolinsky’s best dream (God in the form of a horse made of bees who carried bees made of horses), and Rachel saw it. She didn’t say anything, but turned her head to try to see the sketch. She pointed at the sketch and raised her thumb, and I told her “It’s the widow Smolinksi’s Electra Complex.” Rachel thought that was the title of the sketch and said, “I love your drawing, but I love the title more.” That’s the first thing she ever said to me, which was awesome. The second thing she said was, “Are you Rex Tugwell?” which was just terrible. The third thing was, “Cause someone threw up in the lobby,” which was kind of awesome since that meant Rex would have to clean it up. But since Rex wasn’t working (he was dove-hunting), it was terrible. I stared at her and said, “Oh, I’ll have to clean it up. Um, I draw dreams.” Then she said in this beautiful, kind, wise way, “Really. Huh. I have some dreams you could draw,” which was awesome. And then, “It wasn’t me that threw up,” which was also awesome.

While I cleaned up the worst of the vomit, Rachel was good enough to ignore me. As I was finishing though, she asked if I had a second to talk, and I said “Ptttttttttttt…..cha…rrrrrrr.” She moved to a closer chair and told me she had a dream she'd love to see drawn: it was the end of the world, and Jesus came back and he was about two hundred feet tall. He had all these birds flying around his head, and she couldn’t tell if they were buzzards or a bunch of mini-Holy Spirits. There was lightning all over and a really strong wind. Noah was in the background, driving a speedboat with deer throwing coolers off the side because Noah shouted, “Faster! Faster!” She asked if I could draw it. I told her she could pick it up tomorrow.

When she saw my drawing she burst into laughter. She said she loved it, that she wanted it, that she was going to show it to her girlfriends “immediately,” but when she saw my concern about her laughing, she explained all the things that were “special” about the drawing. She asked if I had never even been inside a church before. I said, “I was raised Jesus. I’m very heavenly.” Again, hysterical laughter. She tried to explain what I messed up, saying Jesus probably never wore gladiator armor, didn’t file his teeth—and when she said there was lightning she meant from the sky not his fingertips. As for the Holy Spirit, it's a good guy, and in no way resembles the library ghost from Ghostbusters. Also, Noah apparently was a man.

I knew then if I was going to win this woman, I would have to find Jesus, and the kind who has a beard, not a moustache.

Who Would Have Thought?: More Horrible People at the Casino

This past weekend we went to the local Indian reservation with 750 dollars as seed money. Neither Boyce nor Sammy are particularly interested in gambling, but they’re always willing to do something different. Sammy is half-convinced that the passage into heaven will be based on this question from God: “You have five minutes to entertain me with your stories……Go!” Boyce just wants to lose his breath laughing, which Sammy says God will find acceptable in place of entertaining stories. I keep hope that if there is a God, the test for heaven will be how fast someone can dis-assemble an owl pellet.

I have no gambling secrets. Only rules:

1. Rachel never liked to gamble not because she had a moral aversion to games of chance, but because she didn’t like the idea of competing against other people. Therefore I too swore off forever games in which I competed with other people. Therefore I will not play poker, nor will I play blackjack as I do not even want to be against the dealer (the casino as an abstract entity, like aliens or the archaeopteryx, is different). I am only against that sweet-tongued succubus, Chance. Games of choice then are roulette and craps.
2. Slot machines are for non-people, or at least once-people, who have simply exhausted their will to engage with other people. Sammy says slots are for William Loman. I am unaware of this man, but if he likes slots he’s probably ten seconds from driving his car off a cliff.
3. Only low-yield bets. This is for several reasons. First, it stretches the amount of time you get to play. Second, the house always has the odds. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Therefore, your best plan is to spread your chances and go with low-yield wins and low-yield losses. This means sometimes after five hours you’ve only won ten dollars. Or lost ten dollars. This is what keeps Boyce from gambling. After three low-yield bets he gets irritated and says, “Snake-eyes, baby,” and puts it on something that is not even snake-eyes. In fact, it’s not even a craps table.
4. There are no patterns in luck. Each roll of the dice or spin of the wheel is exclusive from all previous and subsequent turns. If double-zero has come up 20 straight times, it’s just as likely to come up a 21st time as any other number. The wheel is not tilted and the dice are not loaded. The spirits of the great gamblers, Tecumseh and Chief Joseph, would not allow such a thing.

We went to the Indian reservation casino and camped around a roulette table. Boyce and Sammy bet only as much as it takes to keep the dealer off their backs. They generally benefit from my relationship with the dealer, which is usually positive. Dealers respect the scientist, not the snake oil salesman nor the suicide. Sammy often overacts his role of nervous bettor, making grand gestures of wiping his brow and shaking his head, sometimes mumbling, “I just don’t…um…yeah, I’m out this one.” It’s unnecessary, and the other end of the spectrum from Boyce who sits there in silence until the dealer tells him to leave or bet, and then Boyce bets the minimum.

On Saturday we were doing fairly well at the table when we were joined by a man to Boyce’s left. He immediately caught my attention as he began making perfectly absurd bets. He would put ten dollars on a single number rather than one dollar on ten different numbers, and of course every single time he lost. He would simply get more chips from the dealer and continue, once putting thirty dollars on double-zero. He paid no attention, as the degenerates never do, to the fact that I was slowly succeeding while he was quickly nosediving.

Sammy, of course, began speaking with the man as he slowly revealed his life. Everyone around the table found it difficult to look other people in the eye. Why are all these horrible people in casinos?! Apparently the man has fathered many children, admitted he doesn’t pay child support, and gets most of his money from stealing catalytic converters from the parking lots of retirement homes.

Finally, he watched me win two spins in a row and asked me to make the next bet for him. He was laughing when he asked me, holding up an ashtray so that he could not so much spit as dribble his slobber out of his mouth. I showed him what to bet and he did it, but ended up even on the spin. He immediately went back to wild bets on single, random numbers. Sammy asked him if he had any kind of reason for picking those numbers. He laughed and said this next bet was for his girlfriend’s age, and put about forty dollars on 16. He lost and laughed hard, the way I thought some villain might laugh when you cut his arm off only to learn that he had a secret power to let his arm grow right back.

He asked me again to help him with a bet, and I showed him, and again he came up even on it. Sammy asked him why he doesn’t keep betting on 16. That’s when the man said, “I don't care about her. I’m getting rid of her.” It’s as though the man had no sense of continuity, completely unaware of what he had said, felt, and done, and what he was going to say, feel, and do. Boyce couldn’t take it and said, “But you just bet on 16 because of her.” “Yeah,” the man said, “but she may have given me janitorial warts so whatever, she’s gone.”

Boyce and I took different tacks on this. Boyce said, “Yeah, but you knew that when you bet on 16. It’s not like you just learned that in the last ten seconds.” I went this way: “What did you just say? Did you just say…what did you just say?”

The man repeated himself: “janitorial warts.” I didn’t know what to think. Did this man just not know how to pronounce the word, and was changing it to something he incredibly thought similar? Or was this slang for something else entirely? I demanded he tell me again what his girlfriend did. And again he said it. It was just too much. I have already been forced to accept that there are men out there who play video games with some guy who the previous night tried to knife them while a baby sits in a car seat next to them not getting fed, but I have never before been forced to accept something as genuinely baffling as this. When he asked me to help him bet a third time, I refused, and walked off.

If Rachel were there she probably would have asked to see a picture of his girlfriend and kept talking to him until he said something sincerely kind about her. Rachel wasn’t there, though, so instead we spent half an hour trying to figure out which car was his in the parking lot. We’re pretty sure we found it when we found a Mercedes with a bumper sticker that called attention to three different body parts. We let the air out of the tires and went home.