Hank Gradowski

For the last week everybody at the Sleep Center has been talking about our newest chronic patient, Hank Gradowski.  Nobody really told me about him, I just heard his name getting thrown about.  When he first introduced himself to me last week I said, “Hank…Hank the Tank…Ka-boom!” He smiled and said that’s right.  But when he shuffled away, Rex came up from behind and said, “Nice work, Typhus.  He’s dying.”  I asked if he was dying from a tank injury, and Rex said I was the biggest idiot he had ever met. 

I later found out in the break room thank Hank is not dying from a tank injury (I was then called an idiot again, this time by Marcus, one of the assistant).  Instead, Hank Gradowski has Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which is the polite way of saying human mad cow disease.  Marcel tried to explain to me what exactly was happening in Hank’s brain using words like “spongebob encepholopod,” “prius,” and “microscope.”  I tuned him out until he said it’s kind of like his brain is liquefying.  Hank is slowly losing the ability to fall asleep, which Rex says is going to make Hank go "ape."  The Sleep Center is doing what it can for him before he either dies or goes into a coma. 

Hank’s a pretty great guy, though.  I asked him if he was dreaming when he slept, and he was, and then I told him I’m a good dream interpreter and sketch artist.  Hank got excited because, since he has memory loss, he likes to know about the dreams he doesn’t remember.  He told one dream about how he went to an underground rodeo with the leader of North Korea, only to find out they went on the wrong day and so instead sat on the ocean and ate Mentos breath mints together.  I sketched it for him and he was pretty happy, and told me he’s excited to look at it when the deterioration of his neurons causes his dementia to create further memory loss.  That Hank!

He commissioned me to draw as many of his dreams as I possibly can.  Last night Marcel and Marcie, an assistant, were working with him, and he told me another dream he had.  His speech is pretty slurred so it took a while for me to understand, but it seems Hank was in a fitness center with a whole bunch of identical twins, and he was walking around pouring Pepsi on everyone from a two-liter bottle.  I started working on it immediately in the utility closet.  Marcel told me that Hank had also told him about a dream involving a book being shot to space that leaked milk on its way to the sun.  On the way out with his caretakers Hank whispered to me not to tell anyone, but that he didn’t see those things in his dreams, but when he was awake.  I told him I wouldn't tell because sometimes I wish people are around so badly it's almost like they really are there.

Then he said he hopes he starts hallucinating about pretty birds just for me, and I told him that would be awesome.  Then I told him if he didn’t hallucinate about birds that would be okay, too.  And then I called him "Hank the Tank," because Rex is the one who's an idiot.

Sammy's Delivery and the Baltimore Oriole

Sammy was irritated that Boyce Jr. didn’t want him to come talk about his ancestor, Charles Brockden Brown.  He nevertheless happily agreed to help us order things to Dr. Keegman’s office.  In fact, just this morning he called us to say that he’d already hand-delivered six boxes of sandwich buns to the doctor’s office.  The receptionist just stared at Sammy when, dressed in his Arby’s uniform, he brought in the boxes for “one Dr. Jonathan Keegman.”  The receptionist told him there must be a mistake, but Sammy had an order form all filled out and showed it to her.  She told him she didn’t care what the order form said: “What in God’s name would we want with six boxes of buns?”  Sammy said it wasn’t his job to judge, and that maybe this Dr. Keegman was planning a rogue potluck, or perhaps he was an agoraphobiac.  “Do you know what an agoraphobiac is?” he asked her.    She told him to get out, and he agreed to, but refused to take the buns with him: “You’ll just have to dispose of them yourself, ma’am.  If I walk out that door with a delivered order I could be fired.”  So he stacked the six boxes next to a few patients sitting in the waiting room, and whispered to all of them, “What’s a doctor want with a bunch of expired hamburger buns?  Weird, if you ask me.”  Then he left. 

I think Sammy is the most excited of all to torment Dr. Keegman, and he said he’d research all the things he could find that were payment upon delivery.

Meanwhile, the leaves are falling where I live, and that means it’s autumn, or as my dad would always call it, “The season of remorse.”  The recommendation from ol’ Cyrus is to head out and look for some migratory birds while you still can.  Just like dad always said, “This might be the last chance you get!”  This past weekend I got a couple good looks at some Baltimore Orioles, one of Rachel’s favorite birds.  She once bought me a hat with a Baltimore Oriole on it, but I generally don’t wear it so I just keep it on the top of my coat rack.  I don’t want to wear it out and then one day not have a hat Rachel gave me.  I know it’s an impossibility, but I still think I’ll get this phone call from her and she’ll say, “Cyrus, come quick and save me!  My apartment is on fire!”  Then I’ll grab that hat and run over to where she used to live, and say, “I’ll save you, Rachel!  Come on, you've got to--what's that?  This old thing?  I'm not sure where I got it....Are you sure?  Maybe you did get it for me...What's that?...Well, I love you, too!” 

Note: Since her apartment was a rental it doesn't really matter that it burns down.

Boyce Jr.'s Class

I wish I could type that the talk to the kids went well.  I wish I could say that at one point when I spoke about the nesting techniques of the Carolina Wren each little child held their head up to me like baby Ospreys reaching up for digested chum from the mother’s beak.  That on our way out Boyce told me I really got to those kids, and three of them were on the elementary school roof wishing they could fly.

None of that happened, though.

I knew Boyce was going to speak to the class too, but I had no idea there was a third speaker.  One of the students' uncles named Jonathan Keegman, a well dressed doctor who gave us business cards, sat next to us in the front of the class.  When Boyce Jr.’s teacher, Ms. Felton, asked which of us would like to go first, I stayed quiet.  I figured the kids would ask so many questions—“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Wetherbee, you say the Dark-Eyed Junco’s song is different than the Yellow-Eyed Junco?  How so?”—that the others wouldn’t have time to go.  Boyce didn’t speak because Boyce didn’t want to speak.  So Dr. Keegman said he’d be honored, and then he stood up before the class and asked them if everyone knew what a doctor did. 

That’s right, he said.  Doctors save lives.  For about ten minutes he told stories about saving lives, and he really had the kids going when he told the story about how he saved a puppy’s life when it ate too much cotton candy.  He told the kids that the boy who gave that dog cotton candy didn’t know it was bad because he wasn’t a scientist.  Scientists, he said, teach us about all kinds of things.  He said scientists teach us the truth while what we hear from other people is sometimes just gossip and lies.  He said people don’t always mean to tell lies, they just thought they were telling the truth.  He asked the kids if they ever had an experience where they found out something they knew was true turned out to be false.  I looked over at Ms. Felton and she was kind of nervous that none of the kids were raising their hands, so I raised mine and said, “People thought halcyon birds, or the kingfisher bird, nested on the water, but that’s not possible.”  That kind of caught him off-guard though, and he looked back at the kids and asked again.

When none of the kids spoke he gave an example.  For instance, he said, let’s say a whole bunch of people told you that something bad really happened.  A whole lot of people said it, it must be true, right?  “You’d be surprised how many people still think that about the kingfisher,” I said, but again, he was clearly not looking for something from me.  So he went on: but what if the only reason they thought the really bad thing happened was because they were taught that—taught that by the supposed victims of that bad thing.  And then what if you found out that those supposed victims were using that bad thing that never happened to increase gold and gem prices during economic panics?

That’s when Ms. Felton stood up and shouted for this to stop.  I think Boyce had fallen asleep, because his head shot up real quick.  Dr. Keegman told her that he didn’t mean anything in particular, but Ms. Felton told him we were out of time, and maybe we should pack things up and leave.  Boyce was confused but didn’t really want an explanation so he started to pack his records up.  He shouted to Boyce Jr. that he’d see him at home and waited at the doorway for me.  Dr. Keegman and I were awkwardly being whisked to the door by Ms. Felton, and Dr. Keegman said, “Freedom of speech, kids!  Freedom of speech.”  She moved us all into the hallway and slammed the door.

When Boyce and I went to the van I saw something and rushed back to Boyce Jr.’s class.  I knocked on the glass but everybody’s head was down.  Even Ms. Felton’s.  She raised her head and waved me away.  I came in anyway and told her that I’d seen an Indigo Bunting nest outside, and I could bring it in.  She told me no, and that I should leave.  “I’m positive the nest has been left for the fall,” I said.  But then she just put her head down again.  All the kids were looking at me, and I thought they could all go for an Indigo Bunting nest, so I said, “Do you know, Ms. Felton, they use spider webs to keep the nest together?”  And then she told the kids to put their head back down and asked me to leave. 

I asked Boyce what happened back there, and he told me he drifted off as soon as the suit started talking.  He didn’t want to listen to how great that doctor was, nor think about Boyce listening to how great that doctor was.  I told him that we had Dr. Keegman’s business card, so we could start a slow-burn revenge by having things delivered to his office.  He thought that was pretty great, so we started brainstorming.

Charlotte's Chips and That Mexican Woman

Yesterday I rode the bus with Sammy to meet Boyce and Charlotte for lunch at Charlotte’s new favorite Mexican restaurant.  Charlotte doesn’t talk very much, but when she’s eating chips and salsa you might as well move to another booth.  I’m pretty sure the only reason she wanted Boyce to invite us is so the waiter wouldn’t hesitate in bringing a sixth or seventh basket of chips.  One of the saddest I’ve ever seen Charlotte is when we drove past her former favorite restaurant, Senor Frog Wearing A Sombrero and a Bandolier, or something like that.  The restaurant had instituted a two-basket limit on chips and salsa, and as we drove by it Boyce forgot, and said, “You want some chips, babe?”  She dropped her head; didn’t even bother sobbing.  When we stopped at a red light Boyce told us about the restaurant’s new policy, and Sammy demanded we turn around and drive by it again.  As we did, Sammy grabbed an old, lukewarm Arby’s coke from the cup holder and heaved it at the restaurant.  Thing was, we were in the outside lane, and all he did was heave that paper cup against the driver’s window of the car approaching in the right lane.  Needless to say, those two men inside the car were both confused and angry.  Boyce is a big man, and Sammy looks like he could get one good shot in, but we were all terrified.  Charlotte was in the back seat with me and didn’t even react because she was still thinking about the chips policy.  Before we got to the next red light we were frantically trying to figure out what to do.  I think out of fear, I shouted, “Ram them!  Ram them!” until Boyce told me to shut up.  He tried to do a U-turn but traffic just wouldn’t let him.  And those men in the car next to us just kept right by our side.  When we were forced to stop at a red light, Sammy told us he’ll take care of it.  He rolled down the window, leaned out, and shrugged his shoulders as he said, “It happens.”  I don’t know what was going on in the lives of those men next to us, but when they saw Sammy do that they burst into laughter.  The guy in the passenger seat started trying to rock their car side to side.  The driver held down the horn.  When the light turned green, Sammy even leaned out to hi-five the driver.  When he got back in he said, “Angels among us,” and Boyce explained how awesome they were through a dizzying string of obscene modifiers.  I leaned over to Charlotte to say that clearly the chips policy wouldn’t last.

So yesterday we met at a different Mexican restaurant, one much more authentic based on the Western Union signs in the window.  As Sammy and I went inside, a Mexican woman in the parking lot began talking to me in Spanish.  She tried to communicate with me, but I didn’t understand.  She got really excited, and then she walked away.

When we sat down with Boyce and Charlotte Sammy told me that my behavior with that woman was one of the more incredible things he’d ever seen, including those lovely reefer addicts from the coke-throwing incident.  According to Sammy, I didn’t even nod my head or squint when she spoke to me in Spanish.  I did nothing but stare right at her with a completely blank expression, and this expression did not change no matter how many times she got excited or pointed at different things in the parking lot.

I asked Sammy what he expected, but he ignored me, saying, “That was spectacular.  She was trying to bring a street sign to life.”  I asked him why he didn’t help her out, and he claimed he was too impressed with “the most brilliant impersonation of death by something that breathes.”  I told him that the woman was probably crazy, since I was the last person at the restaurant she should speak to in Spanish.  Surely, if she was in danger she would have just walked inside and asked one of the workers.  We spent a lot of the lunch talking about different situations that made her speak to me instead of anyone else.  We came up with several scenarios that involves car bombs, kidnapping, arson, and prostitution.  I was going to say maybe she thought I was good looking, but didn’t because then Charlotte joined in, saying the woman had just lost her son’s dog, so why ask people in the restaurant who had been inside all day.  So we raised our glasses to finding the dog.  It was a few seconds later when Boyce said, “I bet it was a Chihuahua.”

When we left Sammy said my complete lack of sympathy through body language was inspiring, and he was going to try to make it a week without giving a single courtesy laugh to anyone.  Boyce said that was impossible, that especially in his line of duty he wouldn’t make it a day.  They wanted to bet, so I placed the odds at 10:1 Sammy fails.

Tomorrow I go to Boyce Jr.’s classroom!  Turns out Boyce caved and is going to go in with me to talk about his record collection.  He told Boyce Jr. not to tell his teacher that though, so I’m not sure what she’s expecting.

Preparing For the Speech

I already know what the highlight of the week is going to be.  It’s not the coming migratory patterns which remind me that just because the Universe is a blind mother who at times offers her teat to us, and at times offers her teat to disease and carnage, doesn’t mean she isn’t beautiful.  No, it’s going to talk to an elementary school class about birds.

Last night Sammy and I had dinner at the Lancaster house, and it came to our attention that Boyce Jr. is a whopping eight years old.  He started the second grade two weeks ago, and his teacher has made it clear that she would like parents and visitors to come and talk about their work.  When Boyce Jr. asked his dad to come in to class Boyce said he’d rather die, and then said, “Look, here’s some metal…buzzzzzzzz…now it’s a key.  There you go ma’am.  If your boyfriend doesn’t want to heave your keys into traffic anymore, I guess I’ll be going.  How’s that class?”  If Boyce Jr. wasn’t Boyce’s son he probably would have cried.  Instead, Boyce Jr. just made a stabbing motion with his fork and said, “Traffic!”

Sammy told Boyce Jr. he would go in to talk about his ancestor, the writer Charles Brockden Brown.  Boyce said he’d rather him come in to say whether it’s true that Arby’s roast beef arrives at the store in liquid form.  Boyce Jr. then asked if I would come in and interpret his classmates' dreams for him.  I said, “Sure, but you better hope none of your friends are being abused, because if they are, I’ll know.”  Then after some consultation with his father, Boyce Jr. asked me if I’d come and talk about birds, and I told him I would be delighted.

At this point in time I am thinking about using scare tactics and analogies about parents who stop loving their children in order to explain to the kids how important it is to stop invasive species of animals and plants from moving in on native bird territory.  I will provide them with the harrowing example of The Elf Owl’s loss of habitat, and then paint vivid, realistic portrayals about what would happen to their own internal organs if they were taken away from their family and had only dust and fertilizer to eat.

Below is the outline of my speech:

I.    Introduction
       a.    Birds—why getting high won’t make you one [the anti-drug
              part of speech]
II.    What makes you not care about endangered birds?
       a.    Who doesn’t care about you?  How does that make you feel?
       b.    Who do you know is capable of hurting a bird?
III.    Invasive Species—The end of the ecosystem…or the world?
       a.    The effect of Chinese imports and tariffs on birds
       b.    Hand Puppet Drama: The Story of Mr. Big Farmer and
              How He Murdered The Elf Owl and Buried Him 
              Under a Pile of Corn Syrup and Bank Notes
IV.    Conclusion
       a.    What kind of God would allow this?
V.    Q and A

I’ll let you know how it goes!

Cyrus Picks

After telling me how much money he's willing to spend to get me to Lambeau field when Bart Farv returns (see earlier posting), Boyce told me it would only be fair if I pulled my weight by getting informed about the entire football world.  To show Boyce my commitment, I am therefore making the following picks.

You might think I was a big sports gambler, but that would be an idiotic thing to think.  I do not bet on things that I cannot control.  And while I cannot control the spin of the roulette wheel or the roll of the dice, it does allow me to play the odds.  In sports, it is proven time and again that supposed "experts" cannot guess at any higher rate than computer programs.  That means there is no inside knowledge to aid in sports betting.  It is fate.  And while that is extremely mouth-watering and oddly makes me fantasize about Rachel lying in a bird's nest, I like to at least have a hand in fate.  Therefore, you are just as likely to win in your local "sexual fantasy" football league using my picks as anyone else's.

1. Alabama 45, North Texas 13.  North Texas is not really a place name like North Platte, South Dakota.  Therefore the fact that it's North Texas rather than Northern Texas is stupid.  I have never been to this school, but I imagine it's filled with people who stake their identity on archaic grammatical constructions, rather than learning how to push the ball into the goal zone.

2. Virginia Tech 24, Nebraska 13.  In researching Virginia Tech online, there appears to have been a shooting recently.  They'll be playing for vengeance against Nebraska, who, according to my internet research, did nothing to stop the shooting from happening.

3. Michigan 45, Eastern Michigan 13.  Excited about the fact that Eastern Michigan forms the acronym EMU, I rushed to their web site to see what their mascot was.  It is an eagle.  This is aggravating for several reasons.  First, eagles are endlessly subjected to unoriginal mascotry which turns them from unique animals into pedestrian cartoons.  Inexcusable.  Second, there are over 60 species of eagle.  Exactly which one are you, Eastern Michigan?  Or are you claiming that you're all of them?  Stupid.  And third, Eastern has the opportunity to be the EMU Emus, a wonderfully unique creature (pictured right).  Instead, they continued to carve eagles into tiny bits with their rusty Knife of Conformity.  Until the change is made, DOWN WITH EASTERN MICHIGAN, AND UP WITH THE EMUS!

4. Florida 40, Tennessee 13.  I have not heard of either of these teams, but as Tennessee is irritating to spell, I go with Florida (Note: this is mathematically as good a reason to bet as anything you paid to learn).

5. New England 35, Ohio State 13.  Although "The New England Patriots" sound more like a middling soccer team at some snotty prep school, they are nevertheless highly paid professional athletes.  Ohio State players, from what I understand, are not paid as much.

6. Green Bay 24, Cincinnati 13.  Go Packers!

Shocked!, But Right

I always assumed only Sammy and Boyce were reading this.  Maybe Charlotte, I thought, and if I really played my cards right I could get Marcel to read it.  That's all.  Yet knowing this, it is nevertheless disturbing that for over a week I have been silent after writing how a deranged stranger wanted to badly hurt me, and no one even emailed me to see if I'm okay.  Sammy and Boyce knew I wasn't dead, but no one out there in cyberspace bothered to check.  It makes me think about the funeral director who gave me my mother's ashes (he was unaware of our burial plans, or he would have undoubtedly called the police).  He told me, "When they both go you feel like an orphan, no matter how old you are."

Obviously, to those who care, I did not die.  I did, however, endure my third recent episode of physical pain.  First was the monkey wrestling, then came Rex's car wreck, and now the crazy father.  When I went to the Sleep Center for my first shift after the Labor Day trip, I tried to get off the bus a block early and sneak through the back door.  That worked, but it turns out the crazy guy had learned I was the janitor, and when I opened the utility closet, he was standing there.  In the instant I saw him I thought he was going to deck me.  Instead, he poked me with an electric cattle prod.  I immediately collapsed and then he shocked me two more times before Marcel heard my boots kicking violently against the wall.  When he showed up the crazy man threw the cattle prod at my face, which just seemed really unnecessary.

He sat peacefully in the waiting room with Marcel and a couple other attendants until the police came.  They asked me why the man had done this to me.  I told them I had never met the man.  They asked me if I wanted to hear the man's version.  I said yes.  The cops said, "His girlfriend is carrying your baby."

I would not have been shocked if the cops had told me the man wanted to kill me "just because."  Twice in my life people have told me they would just feel more comfortable if I were dead.  I was willing to hear anything, but that his girlfriend was carrying my baby was just too much.  When I told Sammy and Boyce the story, Boyce wondered if the man's girlfriend was a starfish.  Sammy said that still wouldn't make sense, but it didn't stop them from talking for fifteen minutes about how starfish do and do not reproduce, and for some reason, another five minutes about whether a goat would or would not eat a tin can.  ("I'm just saying, the cliche has to come from somewhere."  "It would die."  "Maybe it would just chew the can, like when it's bored, and then spit it out if it saw a leather boot."  "That I could agree to.")

After the cops showed me a picture of the man's girlfriend, I remembered her.  She had come to the Sleep Center about a month ago suffering from insomnia.  I heard through the wall when she told the attendant that she was a having a dream of a two-headed dragon.  When she walked by me in the hallway I told her, "You're pregnant."  She asked me if I were serious, as though I'd just informed her that they were towing her car.  "Don't assume it's twins.  But you're pregnant."

This seemed to explain why the man called his child "my baby."  Once the woman verified my obviously true statement, she told him.  He wanted her to abort it, but she told him "the psychic at the Sleep Center knew..." and refused to give up the child.

While this explained everything, the cops wanted to know how I knew the woman was pregnant, even when she didn't know.  I told them that the woman had dreamed of dragons, which represented three things in dreams: the devil, pregnancy, or the presence of worms somewhere in the dreamer's digestive system.  I didn't think it was the first, because I don't believe in the devil.  When I once told Rachel that, she said that if I wasn't going to believe in God, I sure as hell better not believe in the devil.  "Baby steps," she said.  That left pregnancy or the presence of worms.  The latter actually works better with insomnia.  When I walked out of the utility closet I assumed it was worms, especially when I saw she was a thin woman with a lot of make-up who didn't look particularly educated (which would tell me: worms through lack of cooking food, walking barefoot, or worms through purposeful insertion of tapeworm.).  As I got closer, however, she distinctly struck me as a person who would have a complete fool for a boyfriend, one who would certainly not encourage contraception.  Therefore, I went with the pregnancy, despite the unusual presence of insomnia.

The police were stunned.  I told them it was something I could do often, and when I began to explain to them that really, archetypal images are only the beginning of dream interpretation, they walked away shaking their head. 

When I told Boyce and Sammy, they both interrupted to say that--point of order--it shouldn't matter if I believed in the devil, or even if the woman believed in the devil.  It still could have been the devil in the dream.  It took a few minutes for them to explain exactly why this is so (the starfish/goat conversation had really angered me and threw off my concentration), and I told them I would not make the mistake again.

Anyway, to avoid possible litigation for being assaulted on company property, I got a paid week off.  I did some sketches, some bird watching, and some dreaming.  I even went on a few calls with Boyce in his locksmith van.  If all it takes to get that kind of week is to be shocked with an electric cattle prod, I will begin looking for other potentially parasite-riddled women to eavesdrop on so that I may say, "Excuse me, ma'am, but you are pregnant or in a losing battle with a real or metaphorical evil presence.  Possibly both."

If Only I Could Write

The annual Labor Day trip is over, and I wish I could spend my time talking about the things I did and, as always, failed to do.  But I work tonight, and there's still someone who wants to bite my teeth out of my head waiting for me at the Sleep Center.  I have tried to write about the man by my father's grave, Barry, who hangs out at the cemetery because he'd already bought his plot and then lost his house.  Now his grave is the only place he owns.  Well, owns isn't the right word.  He has to hide at dusk when they shut the gates, but he does have a lot of Doritos and sandwiches hidden around the cemetery, so it's kind of like he owns it.  Every time I try to write about Barry though, I think about that guy who wants to hang me with barbed wire from the high branch of my burning family tree.

I'd also like to write about the homeless man who hung around Audubon's statue and who wouldn't listen when I told him that loud smells of other creatures keep birds away, and so surely he could find another place to sleep in his own vomit-encrusted military jacket.  Every time I write about that man who wouldn't speak to me but instead gave himself splinters by scratching the wood benches, I think of the guy who wants to deliver my colon to the orphanage my children will soon be sent to.

I'd also like to write about how I can't ever get used to the fact that my mother's grave is actually on the property of a Ruby Tuesday's--and the Ruby Tuesday's was there first.  When she died she hadn't gotten over the fact that the manager at her local Ruby Tuesday's told her--after she demanded that since she was blind her check should be reduced since half the cost is to put "stupid shit on the walls I can't see anyway"--that maybe she should dine elsewhere.  She made us bury her urn in the middle of the night by the flagpole in front on the front door, and people always look at me when I put flowers there and talk to her.  Once the hostess came out and asked me if I was alright, but I told her to go to hell because I thought that's what mom would have liked.  I'd like to write about all that, but instead I think of the guy who is going to brush his teeth with my ashes and a toothbrush made out of my elbow.

I'd also like to write about my uncle's grave which, other than my father's, makes me the happiest.  His drunk friends sometimes hang out around his grave until they are kicked out, but then come back when they're drifting through the state again.  They write all over his tombstone, and sometimes it gets washed off, but then they put more messages right back on.  This time I went none of his friends were there, but they had recently written on his grave:

"Ask the devil if it's your turn yet"
"Charlie!" (my uncle's name is not Charlie)
"I poured out nine beers here on August 4th"
"Remember [unintelligible] yeah!"
"Wake up, seepy-boy"
"Apollo is a peckerhead"
And someone put the lyrics to a pop song: "Lo! 'tis a gala night / Within the lonesome latter years!"

But I can't really get into all that, because I think of the guy who hasn't eaten for three days just so he has enough room to digest my entire brain.

I'd even like to write about the other graves I saw, and about the whippoorwill that I saw for the second year in a row at the grave I spend the night at.  The whippoorwill must have a nest near the grave, and it sang its nocturnal song for the whole night, and that made me so happy I couldn't sleep. But then I think of the guy who wants to clone me and then push my clones into traffic while everyone who ever loved me watches.

Annual Labor Day Road Trip

When I went to work yesterday I saw the guy sitting on the curb.  He was whipping a weed into the asphalt and I kind of felt bad for him.  He was clearly disappointed, and part of me wanted to tell him to cheer up, I was right here, and he could pummel me right now if he liked.  When he looked up at me he said, "Cyrus?"  I responded with a no, but then made him promise to let me hold Cyrus when he finally beats him up.

My whole shift I tried to think of who this man was.  To this point I still have no idea.  I'm pretty sure that means it's someone else I've done something horrible to, and he is just the executioner.  I wanted to ask him what Cyrus did, but was afraid I'd give something away.  Marcel was still working when I got inside, so I asked him to do it for me when he left.  He called me from his car to say that the man was walking away from the Sleep Center when he went off-shift, and he looked like a little boy who had lost his dog.  The man's rage has obviously tapped into a deeper feeling of insecurity due to chronic failure.  I must remember to use that when he fights me, in lieu of strong punches or coherent attempts at self-defense.

I will manage to avoid him since it's Labor Day weekend, and that means my annual pilgrimage of graves.  I go to see my father's grave, my mother's grave, and my uncle's grave.  I also visit a couple other graves that I don't like to talk about.  Since New York City, where John James Audubon is buried, is too far away, I also make a trip to Audubon County in Iowa to put flowers at the feet of his statue.

My father is buried in a different state than my mother, so I have to rent a car to make the whole trip.  It ends up being a big part of my budget, but I figure it's worth it.  Ever since Mom died it's been a lot easier to make the trip to see Dad since no one's making fun of me for doing it.  Once Mom died too I put her into the trip.  My uncle died just a couple years ago from a long life of drinking and pill popping.  When he was dying, he asked if I would stop at his grave too on my Labor Day trip.  It never occurred to me to do that, but I said okay.  Then at his funeral, which was a whole bunch of drunk guys in a steak house, all his friends were real nice to me.  Later that afternoon they let me do a couple donuts in the mud pit with an old Dodge Charger.  Some of them even knew my dad, and they patted me real hard on the shoulder.

Who Wants to Hurt Cyrus?

Usually, when Rex Tugwell tells me that I'm going to be gutted like a deer, he's just telling one of his "jokes" while he's "playing" with one of his sharp "knives."  Therefore, when Rex came up to me the other day and said, "Someone wants to cut all your fingers off," I assumed that someone was him.  No harm, no foul.  It was after all, a Monday.  When Marcel LeFarge told me a little later in the afternoon that, "Someone wants to bite your throat off and chew it on the grave of your ancestors," I was more concerned.  I asked Marcel why he would want to do that to me.  He said, "I don't want to, friend, but someone does."  He then described the large man that had been pacing in the parking lot during the day shift muttering all kinds of horrifying things, and then stopping every man, woman, and child to see if they knew Cyrus Wetherbee.

Marcel asked me if I'd made any enemies lately, and I told him it was my unfortunate habit to make enemies all the time.  It's generally not my fault.  An involuntary, ill-timed laugh--"Oh my, I thought you were joking about your brother's suicide"--or an impetuous remark--"Sorry to interrupt, but please don't tell your kids the birds are playing.  They're fighting to the death to see who gets to mate"--always lands me into trouble.  Even when I'm with Sammy and Boyce, I'm the one that the drifter we pick up in Boyce's van always has a problem with.

I asked Marcel to describe the man to me, and he just said "unpleasant."  I called Rex and his best description of the man was to laugh really hard into the telephone.  I called Sammy and Boyce and told them someone's hanging around the Sleep Center that wants to hurt me very, very badly.  Needless to say, they were both excited and promised their full support.  Sammy said if I could beat a chimpanzee I could certainly beat a human being.

I always wanted to get into a fight when I was around Rachel.  For months I had fantasized about defending her honor that I got so hungry for it, I kind of began instigating it.  When a man bumped her at Pizza Hut, I asked him if he wanted to take this outside.  Rachel told me to shut up, as the man was not only clearly elderly, but blind, too.  It was in fact, not the man who had even brushed up against her, but his seeing eye-dog.  When I asked the art museum's cashier if he wanted to fight, Rachel told me she would stop hanging around me if I didn't stop.  To be fair, that cashier kept his hand in her palm for way too long when he gave her change.  Turns out, no one ever really compromised Rachel's dignity.  Sammy said he could hire one of his teenage workers from Arby's to say something horrible, but I said no since none of them were white.

I have tried to think of who I have offended so badly they would wait for me in the Sleep Center's parking lot.  I have amassed the following list:

1. Someone hired by the ghost of my mother.
2. Rachel's priest.
3. The Saturday morning city bus driver who refused to take the nearly 10,000 coupons (valued 1/100 cent) that Sammy had spent four years collecting.  To be fair, Sammy is more his target, but I did shout over his shoulder, "Can't you read?"
4. Mrs. Marley, my sixth grade teacher, who didn't appreciate that I couldn't stop laughing at the words "upcoming hysterectomy."  They just sounded funny to me.
5. One of the guides at the Columbus Zoo's Habitat Hollow, when I demanded him to tell the children in the tour that some birds actually seemed to choose litter to make their nests with.
6. Drifters.
7. Most Brazilians.
8. My aunt's wedding DJ.
9. Whatever corporation owns the brand name Hot-Pockets.
10. The lady at the DMV who provided no real evidence that paramedics wouldn't choose to let me die so they could harvest my organs for oil tycoons and retired athletes. 

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.

A Low Point for Cyrus

Sammy and I ate dinner with the Lancasters yesterday. We talked about heading out to the local Indian reservation to make more money off my monkey wrestling winnings. I used to not like to gamble with Boyce and Sammy because they distracted me. Once I was sitting at the roulette table in Vegas with Sammy. He started talking to this other guy at the table which I generally don’t mind. But the story the other guy told was so disturbing that I simply couldn’t continue. Sammy somehow got him talking about his hometown. This is a favorite subject of Sammy’s and it produces some wonderful stories, and in this case, some horrifying ones.

In this instance I overheard the man tell the story of a guy from his high school (most hometown stories begin this way) who was the quarterback of the football team. He was a “straight-shooter,” the man said. The kind of guy, “who wouldn’t stab you with a screwdriver.” There is just no way to concentrate on anything when someone describes an admirable person by explaining how they would be unwilling to jam a sharp tool into you. This un-stabbish quarterback went to a party where he got very drunk, unusual for him. Out of his mind on whiskey, one of his linemen took him up to where the teenagers neck and canoodle. Approaching a car the lineman said he’d take the driver, and the quarterback can take the girl. They each opened the door and the lineman pummeled the driver, while the quarterback pulled out the girl and had his way with her. Only to realize that the girl was the quarterback’s sister. The quarterback ran away and was later found drowned in a local pond.

At this point in time the roulette ball was spinning. I’d made my bets which were all foolish, no doubt compromised by some lunatic telling me an outrageous story that was as ghastly as it was undoubtedly untrue. As Sammy says, I blew a gasket. I reached into the roulette wheel and grabbed the ball, screaming how I was distracted when I made my bets. The dealer was a small Asian woman who reached for my arm as I grabbed the ball. Too late Tokyo Rose, because I already swallowed it.

In retrospect that was the wrong thing to do. I was quickly grabbed by some large men and told that while every one else’s bets were safe, my money was gone, and if I didn’t get off the grounds immediately I would offer a small but important part of myself to be the new roulette ball. Since I was actually using my fake id of Boyce while I was there, he was the one who received a letter explaining his permanent banishment from Excalibur Casino.

Sammy later told me that I shouldn't have been so disturbed by the man, that in fact I should have liked him based on my hatred for most things people say. Here's the thing: I do not like it when most people speak their opinions because those opinions are generally based on: 1) a lie, 2) a rumor, 3) someone else's opinion. Since #3 generally comes from other #'s 1 and 2, you can understand how endless this is.

For instance, I understand Barack Obama is our "president." I do not care what anyone has to say about this man. I simply don't care because why on earth should I? I certainly never said I was interested in what you thought because I am not a liar. Sammy is the only person I know who says, "What do you think?" instead of, "You know what I think..." To be fair though, Sammy doesn't care what the person actually says--he's just interested in how people say it. Rachel was like that: she didn't care what you thought, just what your thoughts meant about you. As for Boyce, he just doesn't care about most things, and I am generally looking up at the sky because anything falling from a bird's butt is more genuine and enlightening than what rises out of a person's mouth.

This is why Sammy thought I should have liked this man. After all, he told a wildly inappropriate story (even for a roulette table) instead of saying some simplified opinion he got from someone else about politics, religion, or someone he doesn't like. This man, Sammy said, was shockingly original, which next to no one is (certainly not people who want to be shocking or original). Next to talking about who he thinks would win in a fight between a red-tailed hawk and a german shepherd, his story should have been one of the best things he could have told us, even if we didn't like what we heard.

Therefore I changed my mind. I also changed my mind about Sammy and Boyce being around me when I gamble. I pride myself on being somewhere between degenerate and professional on the gambling spectrum, and I was never sure where eating the roulette ball falls in that. With Sammy and Boyce as my wingmen, however, I can not only learn to appreciate the fresh jabber of alcoholics, prostitutes, and lunatics who often sit by me, I can also learn to love myself a little more.

By the way, when word somehow got around at the Sleep Center about how I ate the roulette ball, I had one religious lady tell me that it was the demon of gambling working in me. When Rachel heard that she said maybe it wasn’t the demon of gambling but the angel of investment capital, since those two little devils are never in two places at the same time so you'd almost think they were the same thing. I didn't get what she was talking about, but she touched my arm when she said it so I just kind of mumbled, "Seriously...Jesus is awesome...no way devil..." and then pretended she was a blackjack dealer with a pet falcon who asked me to marry her.

P.S. The red-tailed hawk would destroy the german shepherd. The dog just couldn't overcome the advantage of position.

Misrepresentation of Class Aves

Ever since I mentioned the magpie in the picture of the golden eagle whipping the fox I’ve been thinking about Rachel. She loved magpies, which at first is an odd choice for a beloved bird. Like many members of the noble and misunderstood Corvid family of birds (crows, ravens, jays), it’s associated with a lot of mythology, but none more famous than the rhyme about what number of magpies you see:

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
And seven for a secret never to be told.

When I told her about that rhyme she’d never heard it before, and she thought the phrase, “One for sorrow, two for joy” was just great. She would just say, “One for sorrow, two for joy” for no reason. She also loved the magpie once she realized that Heckle and Jeckle were not actually crows but magpies. I consistently balked at them being called magpies since little in their appearance reminds one of an actual magpie. Their behavior was also puzzling. In this video they are attempting to sell hair tonic to park animals. An apparently mentally disabled custodian dog, probably a Goodwill hire, attempts to do his job and keep them out of the park. Heckle and Jeckle do frightening things to him.




Rachel also loved Woody Woodpecker, again for aesthetic reasons, despite the fact that he is clearly a deranged bird that doesn’t look like a woodpecker. In this video, he attempts to sneak into a baseball game, neglecting his ability to fly. At about 1:18 he apparently has a brain aneurysm based on the look on his face.

When I showed Sammy both videos he thought they were both clearly influenced by John Steinbork, since the law is represented as an arbitrary power that keeps the working poor out of open places. I looked up John Steinbork but was unable to find what kind of cartoon bird he was.

I fear that bird representation in the media, especially when shown to the children, leads to unrealized expectations and therefore disappointment, and possibly resentment. Does your aunt keep parrots because she was born a horrible person, or because when she realized that her exotic birds would never deliver her colorful cereal in loop-form, she became a horrible person? Does Rex Tugwell shoot doves from his back porch because his mother's uterus was formed from the tears of fallen angels, or because he can't endure the bitterness caused by visiting a farm as a small boy where he hoped to see a former plantation-owning, gigantic rooster attempt to philander with homely hens?

Keep it real, America. Not just for the birds' sake, but ours, too.

Birds in the News!

Outrage in Shelton, Connecticut! I realize I'm not telling you anything you don't already know, but the following was just reported: "Nineteen people were arrested Sunday after police raided a home and seized 150 canaries and finches in a suspected bird fighting ring." See the entire story and video here.

This is outrageous for several reasons:

First, and obviously, bird fighting is wrong. In fact, so is most bird ownership. Other than farm birds that are allowed to roam, anyone who keeps a bird in a cage is a filthy piece of trash. And I don't mean the kind of trash where there are some papers and maybe you could recycle them, but oh, someone spilled a little bit of mustard on it so, yeah okay, I'll just leave it in the trash. No, I mean the kind of trash where someone didn't finish their Red Lobster crab cakes.

Why would you keep a bird in a cage? Do you think he likes it? Do you think it's a reflection of your smarmy good taste? I'll tell you what it is: it's a reflection of your soul: lock up something originally free and beautiful and turn it into an isolated madman that fills its food dish with its own feces. That's you! Congratulations, Satan, on putting a gorgeous creature into what is the exact opposite of its intended environment.

And P.S.: your bird doesn't love you. No one does. We all wish you would die so we can finally have a party you don't show up at and ruin.

Second, if you are going to fight birds, go big or go home. This is a picture of a saffron finch. It is, well, a finch. It would be like getting a bunch of your friends and instead of having a fight club, having some kind of non-fight club. The news video reported that some birds were missing wings and eyes, and this is probably due to finch-fighting. Eventually everything will fight. That's pretty much a rule of nature. But the print story pointed out (right after the names of the criminals, as though to insult them) that none of the birds were injured.

I don't consider cockfighting especially "big" either, though it is certainly ruthless. I might come to respect both your gambling as well as your bird fighting if you fought with golden eagles. Here is a golden eagle lifting a fox off a carcass (check snopes.com for validity of photo. I would not lie about golden eagles.). If you're going to be a tough guy and keep birds in cages and fight with them, do it with these guys.

Perhaps the best part of this picture is the magpie in the right hand side of the picture deciding that it needs to get the hell out of there.

I will keep you updated about the canary/finch fighting ring, and do the same if any of you out there decide you'd like to round up some golden eagles.

You're the Best: Back after Monkey Wrestling

Wow. It’s been a while since I’ve written. I know you’re wondering why, thinking, “Cyrus must have been doing something great. Maybe he helped deliver a baby or something.” Actually, I’m recovering from getting beat up by a chimpanzee.

If you remember, two weeks ago Rex Tugwell invited us to monkey wrestling “down at the airport.” I didn’t want to go, figuring that monkey wrestling was really code for some kind of metaphorical but nevertheless public de-pantsing at the hands of Rex. Both Sammy and Boyce, however, were excited to go.

I was none too excited that we had to go with Rex Tugwell, nor could I understand why he was inviting us in the first place. But when he told us to pick him up about a mile away from the airport, I figured why: if the police showed up he wouldn’t have to worry about his car being identified. Boyce said he’d bring his van since he was angry about the threat of going to part-time work, so we all sat in the back as he drove us to the airport.

Our city has a small municipal airport, and just to the west of it are a series of hangars for little prop planes. Rex pointed us to the last one where some cars were parked out back. We went into the hangar to find about three dozen men standing around a boxing ring. They were just drinking, but I got the feeling that something incredibly disturbing was happening. Like when I was a kid and woke up in the middle of the night to see my uncle’s car entirely on its side in our front yard, and he there digging a hole and laughing.

We walked with Rex who would high-five random people or call them horrible names and laugh with his mouth way too open to trust him as anything but ready to eat his own arm. In one corner of the ring was a small metal cage, and Rex told us there’s the monkey. It had just enough room in the cage to turn around. Sammy said it was actually a chimpanzee, and Rex said, “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Rex told us that you paid twenty-five dollars to enter the ring. The monkey would be released and if you could stay in the ring with it for one minute then you won a thousand dollars. The only thing was, you had to put your money down before the first guy ever gets in the ring.

Rex begged us to put our money down, and Sammy, who was really trying to get a good look at the chimp, as though it’s height might change whether he entered or not, decided first. He told Boyce he had to do it, and Boyce said fine. Rex told me that he was willing to pay my money if I entered. It didn’t take much to convince me. Even though most things make me nervous and scared, I do them anyway. We went to the ring and got a good view to watch the first guy with the chimp.

The first guy was bigger than Boyce. He was really serious, spitting into his hands and trying to get a good footing on the mat. I watched the owner of the chimp shouting at it until suddenly a bell rang and the front of the cage slid straight up. I don’t know how fast normal chimpanzees are, but I had to assume that this one had eaten the four other fastest chimps. In two strides it was across the ring and latched to the man’s face and neck like the way a starfish sucks onto a rock. The man immediately fell on his back, and the chimp began pummeling him on the sides of the head. The bell rang again and immediately the chimp jumped off the man and ran back into his cage where the gate slid back down. The man lying on the mat looked hurt, but more than anything he looked scared—like he’d reached down to pick a flower and came back without an arm. They dragged him off the mat and when he stumbled by us Sammy asked him if he had any advice. I don’t think he heard us since he just kept waving his hands in the air. Rex couldn’t stop laughing, but Boyce, Sammy, and I were scared. Sammy guessed that this wasn’t animal cruelly since clearly nothing was ever going to happen to the chimp.

(For an example of a chimp fight)

Seven more men were pummeled in like fashion, though to the chimp’s credit he always jumped off them when the bell rang. No one got too hurt, though one guy did lose two teeth which really freaked out Boyce. Rex asked if I was going to chicken out and I told him I most certainly would. Surprisingly, when Sammy was informed he was next he didn’t hesitate to jump into the ring. He walked up to the chimp’s owner and spoke to him for a second, then leaned down to talk to the chimp. Before he left Sammy told us his strategy was to befriend the chimp. He had a candy bar in his pocket that he had unwrapped, and when he spoke with the owner, he snuck the chimp a piece. As he walked away to his corner of the ring he winked at us. When the bell rang he was going to offer the chimp the rest of the candy bar, thus winning without either fighting or defending himself.

Waiting for the bell he took the candy bar out of his pocket and waved it at the chimp. The bell rang and the chimp burst out of his cage. Sammy didn’t even have time to extend his arm with the candy bar. In pure defense he simply chucked the candy bar at the chimp and then heaved himself over the top rope. He landed hard on a foldout table and knocked over quite a few drinks, but no matter because everyone thought it was hilarious. Everyone was cheering him and patting him on the back for such an absurd, doomed strategy. Sammy held his arms up to the roar of the crowd.

There was another guy to go before Boyce, so we thought to talk strategy. Boyce thought the best thing to do was just try to give an enormous kick to the chimp on its way over to him. We told him if he did that he’d never be able to get over the ropes before the chimp began punishing him with those meathooks. Boyce just shrugged though. When the guy before him got slaughtered, Boyce put a huge wad of gum between his front teeth and gums, then climbed into the ring.

Just before the bell rang Boyce put his right leg back to get ready to kick. He looked like someone who really wanted to kick a long field goal. As soon as the bell rang he started to kick. I don’t even think the chimp was out of his cage before the kick was half-over. That chimp though was so fast that Boyce actually timed it perfectly and kicked that chimp square in the face. It fell over to his side and Boyce just stood there, kind of stunned. Then the chimp got up, stared at Boyce for a few seconds, and rushed him. Boyce didn’t waste any time and dove out of the ring. The crowd cheered for him because he’d made it the longest: 14 seconds, and half of that was just the chimp staring at him in a you-know-I’m-going-to-eat-your-eyes-out-for-that-right? kind of way.

Rex informed me that I was next and both Boyce and Sammy, sensing my lack of resolve, told me to stand right at the ropes, and as soon as the bell rang to just get out of there. That way when we told the story to people I could always say I did it too. I thought it was better than my plan of simply screaming at the chimp until I blacked out. I climbed in the ring.

Whenever I have to do something I don’t want to do, I always imagine I’m doing it for Rachel. Even if it’s washing a ton of dishes, I think, “No Cyrus, you do this for her.” And even though I knew Rachel would be horrified to know I was attempting to wrestle a caged, undoubtedly ’roid-raging chimp, I still thought to myself in the ring, “No Cyrus, you do this for her.” Even when I looked back and saw Rex Tugwell talking with other people and laughing, knowing full well he just wanted to see me hurt in a way that 24 hours earlier I didn’t even know existed, I still said, “No Cyrus, you do this for her.”

I wished for just a second that ornithology had some kind of crossover to primates. If I were forced to fight an osprey I could at least know where to try for a lucky hit. The chimp seemed impenetrable. I thought the eyes and groin were the universal weak points, but going after the chimp’s eyes seemed ungentlemanly. Besides, I’m sure others thought the same thing only to be faced with a brute force that makes the mind go blank and the bladder go empty. Nothing three feet tall should be able to pile drive a three hundred pound man. Even the largest guy of the night, some 400 pound man who thought he’d just fall on his foe, learned that a chimp can punch through several layers of fat to make a man scream, “My liver! He burst my liver!”

Sometimes it seemed like the chimp was just messing with the contestants, and I expected him to do the same thing. It spun one guy around twice before it finally just grabbed him by the foot and dragged him to the ground where it leaped on top of him. Another guy tried to run away and the chimp jumped on his back. For a good five seconds it just rode him as though to say, “Where are we going, friend?” Then, suddenly, it punched him several times in the back of the head.

I wondered what undignified move the chimp would do to me. The whole night it had never gone for a man’s groin. It was either a noble, principled fighter or simply saving its crotch attack for the final fight of the night, which was of course me. I whispered one last time that this was all for Rachel, and then the bell rang.

I just kind of screamed “Oh dear God!” at the top of my lungs and turned to climb the turnstile. I didn’t think anything, even when I felt the chimp jump on my back. I just kept screaming uncontrollably. Everything went white and I was later told the chimp had rammed its forehead into the back of my skull. I have no idea why it would do this instead of punching or biting—what analysis did it do while riding my back to think that trying to break my skull with its skull was the best maneuver? Whatever the case was I saw white for a second and fell over to my side. I was not aware of this at the time but I twisted as I fell, and actually landed on the chimp. It’s head must have hit funny because it was dazed for a second.

Feeling no primate on my back, I stood up and realized I was in the middle of the ring. The chimp was getting up and I panicked. I don’t know why I did what I did. I had watched Boyce, Sammy, and many others leap out of the ring at the very first opportunity. Why didn’t I leap? My God, why? I don’t know. But with reeling tunnel vision, all I saw was that chimp dazed for a second and, inside my skull, on the opposite side where the chimp headbutted me, were the letters R-A-C-H-E-L. I didn’t even see her, just the letters. And suddenly, without thinking, I just kicked the chimp as hard as I could right in the chin.

The crowd cheered and I realized that maybe I could do it. Maybe I could beat this chimp. But as it was getting back up someone shouted “45 more seconds!” 45?! That had only been 15 seconds? Again, I’m not sure with a second opportunity why I did not simply leap out of the ring. Instead, I ran. And for whatever reason, I ran straight for the chimp’s cage and dove into it. The chimp saw me and started bounding over to me. I reached up and from pure adrenaline broke the latches on the gate and pulled it down and shut. Since I’d broken the latch I had to hold the gate down because the chimp—well, he really wanted in that cage. I think I broke some cardinal rule in monkey fighting because that chimp was seriously pissed. He was pummeling my fingers that were holding on to the bars to keep the gate down, but I had to hold on. At one point he jumped on top of the cage and reached down to tear my ears off. I had to lean way down. Even at the time I was able to think that very few people have had a seriously pissed chimp screaming at them from above their head. You know what, though? I have.

For 45 seconds that chimp punched my hands and swiped at me. When the bell rang he suddenly went docile but damned if I was going to open that cage gate. I didn’t let go and let it up until the chimp owner got into the ring, screaming at me that I cheated. Others though were screaming that the cage was in the ring, and nothing said I couldn’t hide in there. Sammy, Boyce, and even Rex helped me out and were checking me over since I was bleeding in a few places. They were all so happy they couldn’t stop giggling. After a while some guy came over and asked if I would accept $750 dollars, and I said that was fine. They gave it to me in cash, and everyone there came by to congratulate me. Not since my uncle’s funeral have drunk strangers been so kind to me. People patted me lightly saying how great it was to see the chimp not be able to get me crying in that cage.

Boyce and Sammy agreed it was just about the single most greatest thing they’d ever seen. Rex told me he would cover for me for a few days to give me a chance to heal, and then he gave me a big, but soft hug. Someone in the background was singing the “You’re the best” song from The Karate Kid, and we kept up with that for much of the night.

That was a couple weeks ago, and things have gotten back to normal. None of my injuries were so severe I needed to see a doctor, so I just spent a lot of time watching birds and thinking. My hands have been pretty beat up so I haven’t been able to type. Now things are getting back to normal though. Even Rex is starting to treat me mean again, though some times when he finishes a three-minute speech about my masculinity, he finishes with, “Dang, that chimp was pissed, Virus.”