FireVaney

The Family Redacted (and friends) came together last night to celebrate the ninetieth birthday of their beloved matriarch, Hattie Redacted. It was held in her son’s luxurious home in/on Chicago’s famed “Gold Coast.” The entirety of this author’s walk-in closet of an apartment would fit into Hattie’s son’s first floor half-bath, with room to spare. This event was catered, naturally, and the catering would put state dinners at the White House to shame. In her informal address to the family (and friends), Hattie, without airs, noted how she’d had the good fortune to chat with dignitaries the likes of Elenore Roosevelt, and dance with luminaries the likes of Isaac Asimov. She paused several times to wipe away a fallen teardrop. (Not the same fallen teardrop, no; rather, multiple teardrops that fell periodically. It was something just short of crying. That is, unless, perhaps, she merely suffered from an itchy cheek.) She’d lived through the Great Depression, abject poverty, two world war...

Who wasn’t drunk? Mister Wench: he wasn’t drunk. He was the only one. He doesn’t drink. He looks like he would, but he doesn’t. He’s the rare breed of teetotaler who fits right in with any dive bar crowd. But see, you can’t master much, let alone puppets, when you’re blotto. So Mister Wench was on his hands and knees in the men’s room wiping up the puke. “Think of it as another donation,” I told him. Believe me, it was his kind of snark, but he wasn’t in the mood.  When the girls weren’t flaunting and exposing themselves or kissing each other, they were gathered around me and Slange. We talked about love and desperation. According to Slange, I need to view love more as a concept than as something tangible. That is, unless these words of wisdom were instead spoken by Nikki.  (Something I didn’t think to ask: Unless you’re getting it on , when is love ever tangible? And, something else: How is love ever conceptual? I get how it’s consensual . But conceptual? No. democracy is ...

Damn near everybody I know who saw it called it: “Disturbing.” It was staged in a lovely little theater on the second floor of a church. This was a late night show. (It had to be.) One of my pals played an Eastern European * pimp who dabbled in bestiality. Another one of my pals was cast as one of two hermaphroditic apes. He wore a head-to-toe ape costume. So did the other guy. Said hermaphroditic apes were, as part of the plot, forced into sex slavery. But that’s not all. Said sex enslaved hermaphroditic apes were not of this world. That’s right, they were space aliens. The patrons were drunk and rowdy. (They had to be.) More than a few of them pulled out their cell phones to film the eastern European pimp and the enslaved alien apes as they danced to George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex.” This ninety minute show ran about forty-five minutes too long. At one point, near the end, my friend in the ape suit whips out a twenty-two inch dildo † and uses it to strangle two of the villains....

Big Len, our rotund neighbor to the west, found a raccoon nestled in his garbage bin yesterday morning. As he looked down at it, it looked up at him. (In fairness, it is possible that, as Big Len approached, said raccoon was already looking up at the inside of the bin’s lid. I couldn’t say for certain; I wasn’t there. You’d have to ask the raccoon—presuming it would offer a honest answer, that is; and presuming you could hire a competent translator of Raccoon-nese or Raccoon-ish; that is, presuming you aren’t such a translator yourself.) Big Len tossed his bulging Hefty bag into the bin anyways and slammed the lid down. He fixed the lid with a heavy shovel to thwart the raccoon’s escape.  Then, yesterday afternoon, whilst strolling to and from the train station, Big Len told Pops that the raccoon was “too stuffed to move.” Sure, Big Len could’ve called up the animal control folks, but he figured they’d be off for the holiday. Fair enough.  Why Big Len had to “secure” the racco...

Last week was a better week. So what’s going wrong with this week? Could it be the cooler weather? You’re supposed to like the cooler weather. Your future is north of here. That’s what you believe. The national inclination is to move south, and/or west. You, though? You’re a contrarian. You’re always pointed in the other direction. “Against the wind.” But if not north, perhaps you’d go east. Then again, you’d consider going west. To Portland, Oregon. According to Chuck, you’d fit right in. Well. Ok. He hasn’t said so. Not exactly. Not explicitly. No. Besides, you’d rather go north. Way north. You’d rather be Canadian. You feel somehow lighter when you’re up there. There’s too much gravity down here. It weighs you down. Then again, Southern California – particularly during sunrise and sunset – felt good, too. But Canada felt better. Calmer. Lighter. Not brighter. Somehow lighter. But you don’t know if you’d actually relocate to Canada. Or even if you should , assuming that you could ....

Thanks to artificial intelligence,  Hollywood,  as we now know it,  will cease to exist  inside of three years.  Flesh and blood actors will only find refuge,  if any,  upon the boards.

A number of loud and flashy storms scudded through the Windy City last night. It’s been a few years since I’ve heard a strong Illinois thunderstorm. As I cheered on the wall-shaking thunder, I recalled the many violent storms of my youth, and then suddenly reminded myself that I was once the Storm Master. [Self-proclaimed.] That’s right, I had the “authority” to rate and judge [subjectively] thunder, lightning, and downpours. As you might expect, the more relentless and varied the claps and rumbles of thunder, and the more dazzling and blinding the streaks and flashes of lightning, the higher the rating. Bonus points if I could feel the thunder seemingly shake the foundations of the house. [To the best of my recollection, I paid little attention to the rain (I was inside, after all), unless, of course, it thrashed my bedroom windows.] Less worthy storms were those that executed strong starts, but petered out too quickly into a light rain [story of my life, really], and so on.  20 A...

Betty slid two frozen Eggos into the toaster oven. I didn’t ask why she didn’t use the toaster. True, there is a “toast” setting on the toaster oven, but did she use it? Nope. She turned the temp dial all the way to max and burnt the hell out of those poor waffles. We’re talking burnt enough to trigger a freaking smoke detector. For real. Did she apologize? Nope. Instead, she pointed at the crumbs scattered over the bottom of the toaster oven. She blamed those crumbs for triggering the smoke detector. In other words, she blamed me. True, there are many scattered crumbs and, yes, I should probably clean them out. But I use the toaster oven several times a week, and I’ve never caught its crumbs smoldering. What’s more, I’ve used the toaster oven several times since Betty charred the Eggos, and the smoke detector hasn’t once peeped. Ergo, the crumbs are not to blame. Such being the case, I’ve left the crumbs alone and I’ve banned Betty from using the toaster oven.  29 April 2005 ...

It’s a simple YES/NO question: “Is it hot outside?” Pose it to Ma, pose it to Grandpa, and their answer? Always, always, always something like: “All I do is sweat.” Restate the question: “So it’s hot outside?” Respectively, their reply’ll go something like: “You don’t believe me, do you? I’m a liar, that’s what you’re thinking. How dare you call me a liar.” And so you’re lambasted when all you’ve done is ask a simple question. In sooth, nobody in my family—save for me, unless the remark I make is facetious (which, if it is, it’s typically as plain as Wonder Bread)—will limit themselves to a simple Yes/No response. In fairness, it isn’t as if they enjoy bloviating at the drop of the hat. You will receive many “I don’t know” answers—especially from Grandpa. Exempli gratia, he never knows what he wants for lunch or dinner. Ask him, point-blank, what he wants for any meal and he’ll say, “Not much.”  19 July 2006

Rufus ate potato chips all of his life. He ate all kinds of potato chips, but only potato chips. He did not eat hotdogs or hamburgers or French Fries. He ate BBQ flavored potato chips, cheddar cheese flavored potato chips, sour cream & onion flavored potato chips, you name it. He ate all brands and all varieties. He ate potato chips. And milk. Chocolate milk. Made with chocolate syrup . And so he’d munch all varieties of potato chips and he’d wash them down with chocolate milk made from chocolate syrup. And the milk was always 2% milk from the fast food place down the street. The fast food place down the street only sold milk in the half-pint size. Rufus only drank milk and bought potato chips from that fast food place, so he gave it a lot of business. He gave them so much business they started stocking bags of potato chips just for Rufus. (Or so he believed.) They weren’t the big bags, they were the little bags. But Rufus didn’t care. Rufus went on like that for many years. His ...