vituperation

Thanks to all of you for the kind wishes about Spot. It makes you feel less alone to know so many other people know how it feels to go through that. If you missed it in the comments, we buried him just outside the kitchen window among the butterfly and Rose of Sharon bushes I planted there back in the fall.

Also, I know this is probably going to cheese off you dog lovers, but words can’t describe how nice it is to have the beagle out and the house back to normal. As much as we want to be dog people, we simply aren’t.

And now, onto happier things, because every time I see the entry about Spot I get all teary-eyed.

The smell of babies is in the air at Crooked Acres.

Baby CHICKENS, that is. No, not McLovin doing his thing (though he does his thing with great aplomb), new chickens coming through the mail. I ordered our new batch yesterday, 27 little cheepers that should be here the week of March 10.

We’re getting 12 Cornish X chickens for meat. I know that’s kind of a downer in the middle of a happy section, but I can guarantee you these chickens will be the best-treated in the state for their short lives, and dispatched humanely and quickly when it’s time. No cages, no beak clipping, no force-feeding, just a happy life and quick death.

Three of the chicks will be Rhode Island Reds, for their winter laying abilities. Three will be White Rocks, also for their winter laying abilities.

Three will be Ameraucanas, like our Frick and Flappy, for their blue eggs.

One will be a free rare breed, of which I do not know the sex or breed. It’s a grab bag chick.

The other four are the ones I’m looking most forward to, purely because they should provide a great deal of entertainment.

We’re getting some Polish chickens. Crested breeds. The top hat chicks.

Two of them will be Golden Polish, and two will be White Crested Black Polish, which are the Don Kings of chickendom.

I’m very excited, and need to get my ass in gear getting the new chickenyard fence done.

Almost five years ago, I still labored under the delusion that I might be able to write a real novel. I have since come to grips with my inabilities, but back in those days I was still naive. In any case, I spent a lot of time hanging around writing sites. Message boards, tip boards, and sites where wannabe novelists posted their writings for peer critique.

I spent a lot of time on these latter sites, not critiquing anyone but being amazed at how truly bad some of the writing was. I mean, we’re talking horrific stuff. Even worse, people critiquing the writing would often RAVE about how good it was, as though the writer was the next Hemingway.

Now, it’s not so well known here, but I have a streak of evil about a mile wide running through me. I wanted to see if I could write something intentionally bad and have people tell me it was really good. I know it’s kind of a mockery of people who are sincerely trying, but I couldn’t resist.

Maybe that evil streak is more like two miles wide.

I created an online persona I named Trevor L. Burnham, and wrote two mind-bogglingly bad short (real short) stories. I mean bad. I posted them on several sites, and got more good reviews than bad. Unfortunately, most of those sites are gone now, perhaps drowned in a sea of crap, but one is still there — Author’s Den. Those stories are still up, and the mixed reviews are still there. You can find them by utilizing Google if you want to see them.

Robyn happened to mention something from one of them yesterday — a character named MoMo — and I went looking for those terrible terrible stories. What I found is that now, almost five years later, they’re so bad they’re pretty fucking funny, at least to Robyn and I. Maybe we’re just too impressed with our own stuff. God knows I’ve spent enough time reading over my old entries and laughing like an idiot.

Anyway, as a lighter followup to yesterday’s sad entry, here are Trevor’s two stories for your enjoyment. Again, please bear in mind that every word was chosen to make the story worse, not better.

The Windbreaker

Jerry’s wife was farting all the time now, and he was getting tired of it. At first it was funny when she farted, or tooted as she called it, but over the years Jerry liked it less and less because by now all the hairs were burned out of his nose. And she kept farting all the time.

“That woman best stop blowing farts out her butt,” Jerry used to think, but the time had come to stop thinking. It was then that Jerry decided to kill his wife with farts.

Jerry spent a lot of time on the internet to find the things that gave people the worst farts. So he became something of a fart expert, but still nothing was to be found that could do what he wanted which was to kill his wife with farts. Until he found a voodoo fart web page.

“BRING DEATH BY FARTS!” the web page said, “YOU CAN USE ANCIENT VOODOO FART SECRETS!”

Jerry got real excited, because this was exactly what he wanted to do. To kill his wife with her farts. So Jerry ordered the secret voodoo fart kit and had it delivered to his workplace at McDonnell Douglass where he was an aerospace engineer. Jerry thought there was irony in the fact that he worked with space stuff and his wife’s farts were lighter than air.

“Ha ha ha!” said Jerry when the voodoo fart package arrived.

The instructions for making the deadly farts were hard to read but Jerry barely managed. It made him have to mix blood from his finger with some powders that came with it and put that into a hamburger for his wife to eat.

“Good,” Jerry thought, “Hamburgers make her fart alot now. This should be a real stinker!” and laughed loudly to himself. She ate the fartburger (that’s what Jerry called it) and never even tasted the extra ingredients.

Watching her all night Jerry started wondering why she wasn’t farting. She just sat there, quietly. So he went to look at the voodoo fart package and found that he had not read any of the small print. This package was a joke package it said and made the fart problem come back on the person who fed the other person the burger! Then Jerry started farting until his insides poked out of his butt, and died.

His wife never had a farting problem again.

(this one is my favorite, if that’s possible)

My Way

“Son, this is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you,” Sam Chalmers said as he undid his belt, removing it from his pants. He was getting ready to spank his son Bobby, who was standing there shaking. His pants were bunched around his ankles as he quaked in his shoes.

“Swish!” went the black leather belt as it cut through the air like a long and flexible knife before connecting solidly with Bobby’s backside. Bobby cried out as the pain cut through the center of his being like a knife, and tears spilled down his pale cheeks.

“I’m sorry Bobby,” his father said to his tearful face, “I think this might be the only way you can learn not to tell stories.”

“B-b-b-but I didn’t t-t-t-tell a story!” Bobby cried out, “It wasn’t me that took the last piece of pie, it was Momo!”

“Crack!” was the sound the belt made when it smacked into his soft flesh again and bringing fresh tears.

“Okay!” Bobby screamed, “I lied! I lied! I did it and made Momo up! Just please stop!” A big bubble of snot blew out of a nostril. Sam started feeding the belt back into the loops on the waist of his pants.

“That’s better,” he said, “Lying is a BAD thing and no boy of mine will be a liar.” Bobby kept pitifully crying when Sam left the room where he had been. He felt doubly bad because his father didn’t believe him and he had lied about Momo not being real.

Momo was real, all right, and Bobby had the marks on his armpit to prove it.

Momo was his special friend, sort of like a person but also sort of like a vampire. Momo visited Bobby at night after his father was asleep and sometimes he bit Bobby’s armpit for blood and sometimes he got regular people’s food from the kitchen. Last night, Momo got the last piece of pie and stuffed it into his fat greasy face, eating it all in less than two bites. Then burped loudly.

Bobby didn’t even LIKE this kind of pie, didn’t his father know that?

“I can take care of your dad for you,” a voice whispered from just inside his head. Bobby whirled around and saw Momo standing there fatly, with his jiggly belly bobbing crazy like a cork on a windblown lake.

“M-m-m-momo!” Bobby said stuttering because he was still crying, “Did you see what he did to me?”

“Yes I did,” said Momo. Bobby saw pieces of last night’s pie, which wasn’t looking like pie at all any more, trapped between Momo’s wide-spaced square teeth. Bobby shuddered with an involuntary shudder.

“And like I said I can take care of your dad for you,” Momo finished and belched. Bobby smelled rotting pie on his breath.

“How?” Bobby wanted to know.

“I can do it my own special way,” replied Momo with a leeringly maniacal and evil grin. “My way is good.”

“Okay!” Bobby shouted out with glee, “Take care of him!”

Momo waddled out of the room, his big fat belly wobbling like lime jello on a plastic plate during a mild to moderate earthquake, and went down the hall to where Sam Chalmers sat reading the newspaper. Bobby heard his father scream once then bubble off only to be replaced with loud crunching sounds. Shortly, Momo returned with his mouth all red and shiny with body fluids.

“I did it my way!” he sang, but he didn’t look like Frank Sinatra.

I sure do love everything these guys do.