The Best Part of Kansas City Is in Missouri (Need I Say More?)

The Wizard of Oz is probably one of the few tales that qualifies as postcolonial American folklore. Disregarding true America folklore, i.e. the myths and legends of native peoples like the Cherokee and Minnetonka who preceded the carriers of guns, germs, and steel, The Wizard of Oz - along with a handful of Disney films, urban legends, and the writings of one Samuel Clemens - is a story that practically every person conceived and delivered on American soil is familiar with. Oz is culturally ubiquitous. I would bet more college PhD theses have been written in the past 20 years on The Wizard of Oz than on Moby Dick.

Originally, the novel was penned by L. Frank Baum and published under the title The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Baum was the son of a New York cooper who later found success with barrels of another kind - oil barrels. Baum was a newspaperman and salesman until finding success as a children's writer.

For those unfamiliar with the story, Dorothy, the film's ingenue, is a simple country girl who wears dresses in patterened dresses and is trailed by a small terrier named Toto. Dorothy lives with her aunt and uncle - Auntie Em and Uncle Henry - on a small farm in Kansas. She is constantly at odds with her neighbor - the bellicose Miss Gulch - who tosses out threats against Toto on a daily basis. The scenes of Oz that take place in Kansas are (take note) filmed in black and white.

One afternoon, a tornado strikes and sucks up Dorothy's house and, traveling through some Kansan portal - a quantum mechanical anomaly of gyrating corn kernel positrons and plains of grain that fold upon themselves like Mobius strips - the house is delivered to the land of Oz. As Dorothy enters the wonderful world of Oz, the restored version of the film switches from black and white to color.

When Dorothy's house ascends from the tornado, it lands on the Wicked Witch of the East and Dorothy is warmly welcomed by Glinda the Good Witch and the Lollipop Guild, a ruddy group of singing dwarves. At first glance, Oz looks like a tropical Santa's workshop. Dorothy takes the ruby slippers the Wicked Witch of the East was wearing until she became casualty of Dorothy's airborne domicile and begins her journey to meet the Wizard of Oz and burden him with a request to be sent back to Kansas.













Along the way Dorothy encounters a cowardly lion, a tin man with no heart, and a scarecrow with no brain. The quintet (human, canine, metal heap, feline, and straw pile) hastily embark toward the Emerald City of Oz to meet the all-powerful wizard, more or less regarded as God.

But Oz is a strange place. The forests are alive, the monkeys avian, and the Wizard a hoax. At the movie's climax, Dorothy throws a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West, melting her into a puddle of perfidious slop, and winning the applause of all Ozites. Afterward, Dorothy is once again visited by Glinda the Good Witch, who tells Dorothy she didn't need to make the journey to the Emerald City after all; the power to go back to Kansas was with Dorothy all along. Glinda tells Dorothy all she ever had to do was click her heels together and say, "There's no place like home."

And so, with some Hollywood tears in her eyes, Dorothy clicks her heels, repeats the now universal line "There's no place like home," and is instaneously teleported back to black and white Kansas where her enthusiasm for pig slop, flatlands, and manure is (suspiciously) rejuvenated.

Kansas is not only the setting of The Wizard of Oz but also the state of residence of most of my relatives. My grandmother, sister, aunt, uncle, great aunts and uncle, four first cousins, and my second and third cousins are all scattered across Kansas.

For those of you who've never been to Kansas, let me paint you a picture. Imagine a blank canvas on an easel. Now divide the canvas in half horizontally with an imaginary line. Paint the top half of the picture blue. Paint the bottom half brown.















That's Kansas. Occasionally, the blue paint from the top half will drip downward. This is called rain. Once a year, the canvas undergoes a bizarre gravity-defying evolution and brown paint from the bottom half of the canvas flows upward into the blue half. This is called agriculture. To complete the painting (and perhaps transform it into a three dimensional piece of installation art rather than a simple color scheme) scatter a few beer bottles about the legs of the easel and put a hot pan of bacon in front of an oscillating fan. That's Kansas in a multi-sensory setting.

Dorothy's quickness to utter, "There's no place like home," should not be taken at immediate face value. Through years and years of seeing Dorothy smile upon her return, The Wizard of Oz has mislead us into believing that "There's no place like home," is actually a compliment to your home. But the phrase can be applied positively and negatively. "There's no place like home," has just as much relevance if your home is a mansion in the foothills of Beverly Hills where servants massage your bunions as it does if you home is a shotgun shack where sunlight leaks in through the missing ceiling shingles and buttoning both straps on your overalls is considered "dressing up." Ergo, "There's no place like home," really doesn't say much in itself; it's a vague statement equivalent to saying, "Things here are not the same as things there." Whether the adage is supposed to make you miss your natal land for its uniqueness or make you realize how lucky you were to escape its pull is completely contingent upon the quality of life your home offers you.

Though it's probably imprudent to compare the situations I'm about to, Kansas claimed my grandfather’s life just as it did the witches mentioned above. Kansas enters Oz in the form of Dorothy's house and plop, plop there are two new plots in the Wican cemetery. Kansas enters the picture for the Swenson family and a few years later my grandfather passes away.

I vividly remember the day my grandfather died. I was sleeping in the bottom bunk of our duplex in Minnesota when my mother, just having gotten off the phone with (I presume) my grandmother, told me Papa had died of a heart attack. I was seven years old and knew what death meant. It meant that never again would Papa and I sit on the stoop of his house and carve open golf balls to get at their elastic innards and watch the tense polymer unwind and pop; it meant that I would never again, under the influence of my grandmother, drop Papa's cigarettes into the sealed off storm cellar where the abysmal darkness swallowed whatever you fed it; it meant that I would never sit on Papa's lap while he had his evening drink and watched Hee-Haw; it meant that Papa would never again make me wooden swords with his table saw and we would never again turn the hand-crank of the icecream maker together. At seven I understood the significance death, even though to this day I still seek out Papa's face in crowds. An irrational, refugee of an idea whispers lies in my ear, tells me that Papa didn't really die, telling me that Papa just ran away from home like a rascally teenager and started life anew elsewhere, somewhere far, far away from Kansas.














So when I think of Kansas, I think of the saying, "There's no place like home," which as far as Dorothy was concerned meant that Kansas was like no place on earth. I retrospect on this for a moment and I have mixed emotions. There's no other place where my grandfather died; there's no other place where I climbed the mulberry tree as a child and ate until my teeth and tongue were stained purple; there's no other place where my sister convinced me to steal from the local toy shop; there's no other place where Papa and I captured horny toads; there's no other place where I cut my foot wide open and lied to my grandmother about how it happened; there's no other place where Papa would order cranberry juice and it would arrive with a scoop of sherbet in it. Kansas is like no other place on earth - recommendation or forewarning?

I see The Wizard of Oz as a piece of American propaganda. After Dorothy kills the witches, effectively eradicates the bad seeds from the sewn land of Oz, there are really no more threats. All the intimidation in Oz is gone. It would seem as though the tornado that inadvertently brought Dorothy to Oz was really a felicitous natural disaster, because it brought her to a land of color and beauty.

Without the witches, Oz is a Utopia. Dorothy can hang out with the Tin Man, the Lion and the Scarecrow, and listen to the Lollipop Guild sing show tunes. She can bask in the radiance of the Yellow Brick Road or chat with Glinda the Good Witch.

But Dorothy doesn’t stay in Oz. She goes back to Kansas. She trades in a world of rainbows, magic and mystery for a frumpy state that's neither Southern nor Mid-Western, where people drink far too much, make racist comments without batting an eye, and still see things in black and white similarly to the way they did in 1939. It's almost as though L. Frank Baum anticipated the dementia that accompanied Judy Garland's later addiction to alcohol when he wrote Dorothy as someone who would rather return to an impoverished hog farm and continue to be tormented by her wicked neighbor than live in a world of fantastic opportunity, peace, and prosperity.

Prosperity, or the lack thereof, is the probably what most bothers me about Kansas, and returning to the state over Thanksgiving only further cemented my impression of Kansas as a dead end. Kansas is a place where people go to die, if not physically then teleologically, which is to say Kansas is a place where people put their dreams to rest.

After Dorothy taps her heels, she seemingly wakes up from a nap, giving the impression that she was merely dreaming of a place as perfect as Oz. When Dorothy returned to Kansas, Oz became nothing more than a fading memory, an impression she wasn't quite sure was real or not. When people resign themselves to stay in Kansas, undergo a similar mental process; they retire their dreams to eternal limbo, wondering whether or not those dreams were ever realizable in the first place.

I wish all of my relatives in Kansas would come to Oz. Everyone who leaves breaks the rut. Everyone who leaves realizes that Dorothy pissed in the wind by going back to the Sunflower State. Everyone who leaves realizes there's more sun and flowers outside Kansas than there are inside. By going back to Kansas, Dorothy is throwing away something really great. She is throwing away the Emerald Cities. She is throwing away the Yellow Brick Roads. She is throwing away the away ROY G BIV of the rainbow. And for what? Roadkill, grain silos and Budweiser Select?

I’m writing this piece not to offend anyone who lives in Kansas and likes it (New Mexico has plenty of faults too), I'm writing it out of concern for my sister, my cousins, and my nieces, all bright, beautiful, and capable girls/women. I want them to get away from Kansas, because just as a goldfish can only grow in direct ratio to the size of its fish bowl, a person can only grow as much as their surroundings allow them. A fish in a small bowl will stay small. And what you don't get to see in The Wizard of Oz is Dorothy's self-reproach for leaving Oz behind. The credits roll and we're left to assume that a happy ending ensues. But ten years down the road, is Dorothy really happy she chose hard-labor Kansas over happy-go-lucky Oz? I think not. Dorothy stayed small. She never grew. She jumped out of the ocean and into a tiny fish bowl.

The deeper message here is not that Kansas is a shit hole, but rather that one should not trade in a world of color for a world of the simple black and white. True, Dorothy would have had to sacrifice a great deal to remain in Oz, but great sacrifices can lead to great happiness, and it takes great courage to make great sacrifices. Most people who don't sacrifice never overcome their regret for bartering away vibrant rainbows for cheap American nostalgia.

The Clothes Are Wet, the Clothes Are Dry

How long will it take before somebody invents the hybrid washer-dryer? Do we really need two appliances to do two separate jobs? It's madness.

If man can take two isolated notions and come up with the spork, strawberry-banana yogurt, and the color purple, he can invent the drasher.

Making Ends Meat and Potatoes

I can now proudly say that I am now a published freelance writer.

In recent years I've been a published columnist, editorialist, CD reviewer, and journalist, but I have now officially entered the world of freelance media, and so far it tastes pretty good.

Since I moved back to Albuquerque things have been progressing nicely. It's been a little less than a month since my liberation from the gallows of Nashville, and in that time I've been able to secure a studio apartment, meet up with old friends, drink my weight in beer and wine, dine at some fine local eateries, recover my desire to cook, watch a cage fighting match with a bunch of middle-aged real estate agents, and get some writing assignments at a local alternative weekly.

Just last week I had a recipe for my specialty chili published (the secret is a combination of ancho chiles, lamb sausage, dark beer and coffee) and I have four more pieces slated for publication within the next two weeks. So far most of the assignments I've received are food writing, which is fine by me. Along with two other recipes that will be published around Thanksgiving, I was able to critique a new sushi bar in Nob Hill where I tried jellyfish for the first time (really tasty, by the way) and just today I reviewed the movie Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Prices. I was appalled to say the least. Any conscientious consumer, anybody who has ever set foot in a Wal-Mart, should see this film.

I already knew from recreational reading that Wal-Mart (along with most multi-national corporations) uses sweatshops and purchases 1.5% percent of China's gross domestic product, but what I didn't know is that Wal-Mart routinely blacklists employees who even mention the word union and will implement a raise-freeze on all employee salaries so other Wal-Mart associates will put pressure on the rabble-rousing ringleaders to abandon their plans to unionize. Wal-Mart also pays their full-time employees below poverty wages and managers are instructed by corporate headquarters to encourage employees to get on government assistance. They cheat people out of pay by reminding employees of their expendability, and so most are goaded into working off the clock so as not to rack up overtime hours.

And when the employees get their paychecks they end up spending what money doesn't go to utilities and rent at Wal-Mart, because Wal-Mart offers the lowest prices around. This circular trend of keeping people impoverished is really sickening, and sounds like satellite slavery to me ("satellite" because the workers don't live on the "plantation"). Wal-Mart also receives government subsidies to open up SuperCenters in areas where schools, fire departments, and police departments are understaffed and underfunded. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. I'm not sure I can ever shop at Wal-Mart again and still call myself a human being.

The main bread-winner though is not my freelance work but some research I've been doing on Chinese businesses for a small publisher in Nashville. Hey, at least one good thing came out of that move, and I've since made back some of the money I squandered on rental cars driving to and fleeing from Tennessee.

Everything is falling into place. I'm still waiting to hear about the results of the 3-Day Novel Contest (winners will be announced in December) and graduate schools (keeping my fingers crossed until March and April). Until then it's time to ski, make some money, fatten myself up a little (depression and worry lead to weight loss) and get as many writing credits as possible. I'll add all of my freelance material to Writerly Rights soon after publication, so keep your eyes posted and your mouths ready.

And to those of you Albuquerqueans and Santa Feans who I haven't yet contacted, give me a shout. We'll do java.

P.S. I had a very strange desire to head butt some elk. Anyone who wants to start a club dedicated to the unnecessary noggin knocking of ruminant animals, please contact me. Those elk have had the run of the place long enough.

Put My Face on the Quarter

I turned 25 today. A quarter of a century. An even 300 months. More days waking up alone than I care to remember, though the days waking up next to somebody are the most vivid.

In observance of my special day, a day I entered this world flailing, naked, and puerilely pink, below are 25 things that help define me, 25 things I've done to differentiate me from the hordes of other 25-year-olds and from those who will some day be 25. To all of those who never made it this far, I'm sorry, but you're probably better off having passed at an early age, you're never as happy as you are when you're a child. Going to the dentist and doctor is actually scarier than when you're a child, because kids skin knees and get strep, adults die from cancer and ebola and lose their teeth. Cartoons lose their addictive appeal. And candy doesn't taste as good at 25 as it did at 7.














And without further ado and in no particular order.

25. Mushed a team of Iditarod sled dogs on top of a glacier.
24. Caught crayfish with my bare hands in summer, Mid-Western streams while the cool rush of water parted ways around my dimpled legs.
23. Lived at the base of a Moorish castle in Granada, Spain and actually started to forget how to speak proper English.
22. Ate raspberries straight off the bush and chewed on wild clover.
21. Made myself laugh hysterically in a public place while others looked on and wondered whether or not to be afraid of me.
20. Woken to the sound of howler monkeys barking.
19. Kept my lunch down while salmon fishing in a boat off the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska with 9 foot waves crashing around us.
18. Got an education I wanted, even if it turned out to be inapplicable.
17. Used a word no one else knew.
16. Abandoned my prepubescent palate and developed refined tastes for things like liver, sweet breads, snails, foie gras, game meat, sea urchin roe, raw oysters, unpasteurized sheep's milk cheese, bourbon on the rocks, wine, and anchovies.
15. Recorded a song I wrote that so perfectly encapsulated every one of my emotions I never grew tired of listening to it.
14. Threw up a cheese sandwich and an unsanitary amount of absinthe at the feet of a Winston Churchill Statue in Prague.
13. Learned to cook better than most restaurant chefs.
12. Came to hate money.
11. Came to understand that what you desire to possess more than anything is often also the thing you hate more than anything.
10. Published my work.
9. Confessed to a lie I'd told.
8. Wrote a novel in three days.
7. Learned to cry.
6. Became well-read.
5. Apologized in spite of my pride.
4. Realized that we cannot will objectivity into existence, and so we must recognize the infirm ubiquity of subjectivity.
3. Didn't stop at "just enough."
2. Gave more than I took and felt at peace with the uneven distribution.
1. Loved somebody and had them love me back.



















I hope I learn as much in the next 25 years as I did in the first.

Math and Cosmonauts

For all interested parties I've started writing music and will possibly have an unprofessional-grad (but entertaining) album of strange psychedelic/rock/altered states/space poetry within a month or so. The name of the "group" - which consists of my computer, my guitar, and myself (I guess we're a trio) - is Math and Cosmonauts.


Now I know what you're thinking, the music I'm writing is probably self-indulgent tripe. I assure you it is. While I learned music at an early age, my biggest shortcoming is not knowing scales, though this doesn't seem to present too much of a problem if you have a good ear. Years of playing piano, trumpet, and guitar have helped me identify what sounds "right.

I tried my hand at a rock band in high school. We were awful. The, after college, I started writing songs, mostly humorous (an ode to a purple onion, a song about cooking bacon naked, etc.). The music of Math and Cosmonauts is very cathartic and has an immediacy of release that writing doesn't offer (too much editing). And I'm writing music just for me, I have no desire for these songs to be appreciated on a mass scale. (However, I'm willing to share them with close friends who express an interest.) I find that I can get a lot of residual anger off my chest much faster by writing a really dreary song than through writing a story in which somebody gets killed. Music speaks to us through different channels.


So far I have 6 songs, with tentative titles and track order.

1. Communist Algebra/Pitchfork
3. The French Are Not Our Friends
4. The World Wants Its Change
9. The Ninth Floor
10. It's Another Day
11. Roosting Alone

The songs are all very depressing, however I lighten the mood with some ironically synthesized horn blasts.

Below are the lyrics to two songs, Pitchfork (The most accomplished track - subject of the song should be easily idnetifiable to those who know my recent hardship) and The Ninth Floor (A creepy space-rock anthem based on a nickname I randomly dubbed my friend Marky).

Pitchfork

You came along and mutated me,
my genetic code was transcribed diseased.
High up in an airplane, in the ocean so deep,
now you're banging gavels or you're probably asleep.

Chorus
There was tequila, there were people,
there were parties, chasing steeples,
there was 6 and 7, 8 and 9 and then
Jean Luc but the French are not our friends.
We had it all until the fall,
took a spill and tumble down you go,
like a pitchfork bailing hay,
sail away.

[Righteous 1 minute solo]

It feels like murder when I wake for the day,
there's a guillotine and it's chopping away,
heads will roll and people will be tortured and splayed,
memories erased and faces washing away.

Altered Chorus
No more tequila, no more teachers,
no more singers, no more preachers,
telling me that only God can lead the way,
love is lorn, now there's hell to pay.
We had it all, we wore the chains,
set it free, only dust remains,
like a pitchfork bailing hay,
waste away.

[Second solo]

The Ninth Floor

[Creepy distorted voice] Who was on the ninth floor?

[Spoken word]
There is nothing among us,
we have no eyes.
We are out of grocery lists.
Where is the wire cage?
Why am I locked in the wire cage?

Six cups,
there are only six cups on the ninth floor.
The ninth floor is a rocket,
it will lead us to the ninth floor.

Into the stratosphere,
nitrogen rich,
deprived,
we will bend.
We will become craters.
We will no longer breath.
We will escape in skeletons,
we will sit in them.

And owls will become our hearts,
owls will be our hearts,
owls will be our hearts.

Exit Stage Left

Beyond the it and the here and the there is a place
where the eyes have skies,
and the clouds can see everything
through the clouds.

Where dirt clods wash cleanly from
fallow garments and forgiveness isn't rationed out
in quantitative bundles but ubiquitous and uncontained.
Hands clasp and lovers gaze and
fucking is second-rate to the alternative,
and even harsh words sound musical
to deliberate ears seeking anapestics in
conversational tones.

When you leave
the it, the here and the there
you will be torn asunder
by the reality that floating above it all
is gravity's trick
to make you fall harder
and faster
and splat louder
on the pavement that inevitably
destroys you.

I wish I were a radio so I
could switch off the news
when it gets bad
and turn myself on again
only when the love songs
that skip like children
come blowing down the airwaves.

Crispy Cotter's Suspended Sentence, Part 2

"This doesn't make any sense to me," Mr. Cotter said, distractedly scratching his head with a butter knife. He then used the same knife to smear a gob of jelly on his buttermilk biscuit. "What is this floating? What does that mean?"

Work had delayed Mr. Cotter at the bank the night before, arriving home hours after Crispy had burrowed underneath his down comforter and drifted away to dreams of candied rockslides and spinning pinwheels, and the bookish banker was just now, in between bites of eggs and peppered reindeer sausages, reading the reprimand his son had pinned to his shirt the day before.

"I couldn't make heads or tails of it either," Missus Cotter, seated to the right of her husband, said. "It's all torsos."

"What does that mean, 'It's all torsos'?" Crispy asked.

"I'll ask the questions," Mr. Cotter reproached. A splash of egg yolk clinging to his hair from where he'd scratched with the cutlery. "I want you to explain this floating. Ducks float on water. The poor float checks. But people? Actual, physical people. People do not float. Unless they're wearing life preservers, but even so. What's this...what's this all about. Explain it to me, please. Somebody shed some light on this cryptic note. What's it all about?"


"Dear, you're not giving Crispy a chance to speak," Missus Cotter said to her husband, filling Crispy's glass with orange juice. "Tell us what happened, Crispy."

Crispy swallowed. He looked at his mother with wide eyes, trying hard not to clam up under the stern gaze of his mathematical father.

"Don't be afraid, my little cinnamon bun. We just want to know what happened. No one's in trouble."

"That has yet to be determined," Mr. Cotter interjected.

"Let him speak, please."


"I was on the jungle gym, swinging, you know?" Crispy said uncertainly.

"Right. Swinging on the jungle gym like a gorilla, were you?" Mr. Cotter asked. "Like a silverback high in the canopy, eh?"

"Don't be foolish, dear," Missus Cotter said. "Everybody knows gorillas are far to heavy to swing from the canopy in the fashion you're thinking."

"Then a chimpanzee! Swinging like a chimpanzee! Is that a better image for you?" Mr. Cotter erupted.

"I suppose," the missus capitulated. "Although..."

"Although what?"

"Although, chimpanzees are more knuckle-walkers than anything else, dear."

"So what?"

Crispy took a mouthful of orange juice as his parents parried over primates. His face folded in on itself like mismanaged origami, but neither of his parents took note. Missus Cotter had failed to add enough water to the concentrate and the juice was shockingly sweet.

"So, why not give fair representation to the other sapien races? Nobody ever remembers gibbons or siamangs. They're the ones that are anatomically built to swing from the trees. They're adapted for it."

"Fine!" Mr. Cotter shouted. Then, to Crispy, "You were swinging like a gibbonang! Then what?"

Crispy was so taken aback by his father's doubly loud outburst he spit the second mouthful of orange juice all over the dining room table.

Missus Cotter took the napkin from her lap and spot-cleaned Crispy's face. Only then did her sone continue his story.

"I was swinging from the bars and then I just let go."

"And then what?" his father asked.

"I just let go. But I didn't fall."

"Why not, dear?"

"I don't know."

Crispy Cotter's Suspended Sentence, Part 1

Year after year Mr. and Missus Canape Cotter listened to the string of teachers - Ms. Asheville, Mr. Dynamonstrous, Mrs. Duvalle, Mrs. Shrip-Noftenner - denounce their little boy as a miscreant and trouble a brewing.

"Better dull your kitchen knives cus in a few years that boy's gonna be a butcher," his third grade teacher - Ms. Doubleornothing - forewarned, drawing a macabre line across her throat.

The PTA meetings were the bane of the Cotter's existence. They couldn't understand how their sweet, little Crispy Cotter could be perceived as such a rabble-rouser. Crispy's report cards, especially in the section denoting behavior, were distressing. Mr. Cotter, a banker, stayed up late every night reading to Crispy from various holy books - the Bible, the Torah, Q'uran, the Bhagavad Gita, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Human All too Human - and Crispy was bright enough to understand the abstract ideals of morality and situational ethics and quid pro quo discussed in these texts. And yet not a week went by when Crispy didn't come home with a chastising red note pinned to his sweater, and when he descended from the rubber stairs of the yellow school bus and up the concrete stairs of his front porch, his mother would take one look at the red note and begin the inquisition.

"Was it Dedrix Groomstozen again?" Missus Cotter asked her son, his gaze cast to his untied shoelaces. "Did he poke you in the eye with a blue crayon again and you walloped him?"

"No, ma'am."

"Pancake Waffleson tried to steal the T-rex figurine out of your cubby like he usually does? Did you bloody his nose again?"

"No, ma'am."

"Sheldon Cetaceous spit on you during tumbling class again so you beat him with a broom handle?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well those three boys are the biggest bullies. The ones you have run-ins with most often. Don't tell me you made another enemy?"

Crispy shrugged. Missus Cotter unpinned the note and read it. Crispy snuck past her and sat attentively at the piano, awaiting his daily lesson.

"I don't understand what this means," Missus Canape said, her expression much like that of a rat swimming against the current. Whenever she was remiss her hair suddenly became entangled within itself. "Can you explain this?"

"No," Crispy said, playing the first few bars of Montimuto's Ode to Splayed Bacchus.

"Well," Missus Cotter resigned. "I guess I'll let your father have a look at this note when he comes home. Until then, let's work on your technique. I want you to focus on not lingering with your sixteenth notes. Sometimes you let them hang in the air like wet laundry."

Crispy looked at his mother and, as far as a boy of nine could have cognizance of such things, felt the tinge of recognizing irony.


Stay tuned, parts 2 and 3 (and who knows, maybe 4) will be posted soon.

Halloween Treats

The best way to get over an ex-girlfriend is to dress up like a Confederate Soldier and drunkenly kiss somebody while wearing fake mutton chops and a delightful handlebar mustache.

Hope everyone else had an eventful Allhallow's Eve.