Are You On The List?
Apparently you can't take Home Ec four semesters in a row in American public high schools. I guess they figure once you've mastered apple-berry crumb cake and knit a full-body adult-size one-piece jumper, you've learned all they can teach you and it's time to move on. We didn't have a Gay Student Union to advocate for me, so out I went to be butchified. That's how I ended up in Woodshop.

Of course I would never have entered voluntarily. Ever since that one time I accidentally killed that cat with seventeen blows from a ball-peen hammer, high-pitched squealy-noises (not unlike your typical power tool) made me wet myself just a little.

Plus, the last place you want to put a cutter is in front of a table saw.

But my pleas went unhearkened and there I was, a pile of lumber at my feet, sawdusty tears on my downy, youthful cheeks, a wedgie waiting to happen.

That's when I met Mr. Stolich. He was the shop teacher. Warm, kindly, always ready with a shoulder to cry on, a comforting arm on the shoulder. We got on so well I even took to spending my lunches in the shop with him, just me and him, telling stories, practicing our back-rub techniques on each other, reporting on the 19th century erotic literature he would assign me to read. Just the kind of stuff a lonely, fatherless boy needed at the time.

For my final, he worked right alongside me, every step of the way. I was making a spice rack, which was weird, I thought. We never used spice in our house. Mom always said that fancy stuff was for "rag heads" who needed it "because camel-meat tastes like horse-shit." I never really got how or why a camel would taste like anything related to a horse, but my God, when she was drinking, the first thing to go were her metaphors.

Anyway, I worked on the spice rack and he worked on his thing, slowly, quietly, careful to keep it just out of sight.

I had to stay after class on the last day to finish it, but when I was done, I presented it proudly. A flat plank of plywood with four odd lengths of dowel-rod sticking out of it. Mr. Stolich beamed. A+.

Then he locked the classroom door and said he was going to show me what he'd been working on. Something special. Something just for me.

I was so excited, so touched, but when I saw it, I was just... confused. It was shaped kind of like a bullet, except it was about as long and as big around as his forearm.

I asked what it was for. He said he'd have to show me.

Suffice it to say that when I testified against him, I had to do it sitting on one of those little inflatable donuts. But you know, a large bowel resection (in retrospect) was a small price to pay for justice, in the end. I think he got time served, a 90 day suspension from the school (with pay) and a permanent note in his record.

The point I'm trying to make is that your heroes always let you down.

This is how I felt when I found out Dick Cheney is a total pussy.

Oh Mr. Macho, Mr. Let's Bomb Everyone, Mr. Fuck Diplomacy.

A fucking light goes out on his airplane and they immediately have to land so they can fix it.

Then somebody tries to blow his ass up, not unlike the everyday experience of the 100,000+ men and women on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and immediately it's WHOOSH! Off to the bunker and then out of the country. I heard he even shit himself.

It puts that whole 18-month period after 9/11 when he completely disappeared into his "undisclosed location" into perspective. It was probably because every time he heard a plane fly over, he swooned like poor, sickly fucking Melanie Wilkes.

147 deferments from 'Nam, but who WILL he shoot? Unsuspecting old men. Right in the face.

Being around this much of a pussy all day, I'm surprised only one of his daughters came out gay.

It's not just Dick, though.

You've also got baseball players taking steroids again/still and other ones being named in books written by whores.

Now, the Tommy Lasorda/hooker thing for me isn't so much a demerit for Tommy. I never was much of a Dodgers fan. By my opinion of whores has sure taken a knock. I mean, come on. Tommy Lasorda was 60 years old and 290 pounds the day he was born. Where are the whore standards I grew up believing in?

But then, just when you are at your lowest, a hero rises. It turns out a food-service worker at a fancy celebrity party exposed everyone there to Hepatitis A, which according to the article, is literally only transmissible if you eat an infected person's shit. Deliberate act of sabotage or overcaution in the face of what could be improper hygiene? I choose to believe the former.

I need something to hold on to.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 9.5


Pops

Labels: mundungus

- posted by Pops @ 12:00 AM