" /> BRAINPAN LEAKAGE » paint
  • Missouri Kat And The Scarab Of Doom…

      0 comments

    LOGO
    I have to be honest. I’m rarely shocked by anything E K does, especially if it involves evil. However, please make note that I said rarely. There are occasions when the Evil Redhead will do something that throws me for a bit of a loop. Of course, since I am telling you this now it should be obvious that Her Majesty has recently managed to leave me wondering…

    As is the custom whenever E K is about to do something I will inevitably blog about, I was standing in the kitchen minding my own business. Well, in truth I was minding the business of a pound of ground turkey as I set about fixing the evening meal. Now, what was unusual about this is that instead of pacing back and forth behind me while gently slapping a riding crop against the side of her leg, The Evil One was nowhere to be seen. This, in and of itself should have set off a few alarms for me, but I was too busy concentrating on what I was going to prepare with the ground turkey that I hadn’t already prepared at some point during the 2009 calendar year. (You see, E K doesn’t like to have the same thing twice within a 365 day period.)

    Anyhow, there I was trying to come up with a unique dish that involved ground turkey when I heard a voice from across the room.

    missouri EK and the beetles of doom
    “Hello, Lackey,” E K announced, her tone both serious and bemused. (Don’t ask me how she managed that. It’s an E K thing.)

    I looked up from the meal fixin’s and there, standing in the doorway, was the evil redhead, decked out in her own version of Indiana Jones adventure attire, complete with a fedora and bullwhip.

    Of course, noticing the whip my first response was, “I’m sorry, your worship, I’m cooking as fast as I can.”

    She ignored me, which wasn’t unusual except that she rarely misses an opportunity to enjoy a good bit of groveling on my part. Instead, she stared out the window into our back yard.

    “Japanese Beetles,” she finally said , and then let out a heavy sigh that was obviously filled with deep seated trepidation. “Why did it have to be Japanese Beetles?”

    I screwed up my face with confusion because I was… well… confused. “Japanese Beatles?” I repeated with a questioning tone. “Are they some kind of tribute band?”

    jbeetle
    Popillia Japonica,” she replied. “Very dangerous.”

    “What do you mean?” I asked. “Are they really loud or something?”

    “Hungry.”

    I cocked an eyebrow. “Hungry?”

    “Very.”

    “I’ve only got a pound of turkey here so that might be a problem,” I told her.

    “They’re vegetarians.”

    “Oh yeah, that’s right,” I agreed with a nod. “McCartney is all about the veggie thing isn’t he…”

    “There are Japanese Beetles in the back yard, Murv!” she barked.

    “Okay, okay,” I said. “Calm down. I can defrost some more turkey in the microwave. Not a big deal. Just go out there and stall them for a bit while I get to cooking. So, just out of curiosity are these guys any good? I mean, should we sell tickets or something?”

    “Whiskey,” she replied, a demanding note in her voice.

    “Yeah… Okay…” I returned with a shrug.

    Since she was still holding the bullwhip I decided I had better comply. I pulled a bottle of the good stuff from the cabinet, poured a shot, then placed it on the island in front of her. She picked it up, tossed it back, then slammed the empty shot glass onto the counter upside down. From out of nowhere a Nepalese man dressed in Yak fur appeared, burped, then passed out and fell to the floor. E K proceeded to take all of his money then kicked him a couple of times to make him move out of her way, and of course “just because”… She’s evil like that.

    “Get the pry bars in there,” she ordered, a wild look in her eyes.

    “Do the what?” I asked.

    She rolled her eyes then barked, “Open the damn back door, Lackey!”

    I did as I was told, because that’s what I do. As I turned back to face her I noticed that she had unfurled the bullwhip and was now rearing her arm back over her head. I immediately cowered in the corner, fear running rampant through my veins. However, the sting of her lash never fell upon me. I peered out from behind my hands and watched on in complete awe.

    With a speedy swish and a sharp crack the braided leather snaked out the open doorway, the end wrapping itself around a tree branch. E K pulled on the whip to cinch it tight, then grasped it with both hands, jumped up in the air, and swung through the open doorway and out into the back yard.

    As she flew past me I heard her mutter, “You wanna talk to God, let’s go see Her together…”

    I’m still not entirely sure what all that was about. She insists that we don’t talk about it. Ever.

    All I know is that we never sold a single ticket, I never heard a single Beatles tune, and I’ve now spent the past three days using a paint scraper to get the scarab carcasses off the bottom of her shoes…

    More to come…

    Murv

  • I Just Want To Go Home…

      0 comments

    Back in 1993 there was this movie starring Michael Douglas. Some of you may remember it. The title was, Falling Down. Now, when you read the plot synosis it repeatedly refers to Douglas’ character as ‘disturbed.’ I will agree with that, wholeheartedly. The problem is, while the synopsis outlines key events in the movie that trigger the character, they paint him as disturbed (i.e. mentally unstable at the outset) and triggered as opposed to being a normal guy who is beaten into disturbia by society and events and then triggered.

    When you watch the movie itself they make this latter point clear, but the synopsis really doesn’t. The main reason I even bother to go into that fact is that some of you may not have actually seen the movie and would base your view on that synopsis. Just want to make sure that is cleared up… So, now that it is, on with the rest of this ranting blog thing…

    ‘I just want to go home,’ is something Douglas’ character said quite a bit throughout the movie. It is also something I say very often… You see, D-FENS (the character – no, don’t get the wrong idea, it’s not some stupid name… You see, for most of the movie you are only able to apply an identity to him based on his vanity license plate D-FENS – he was a defense industry worker if that helps explain it… You don’t find out his real name until later)…

    Anyway, my point here is that I can readily identify with D-FENS. I have sympathy for him. Sometimes I feel like I AM him…

    In case you haven’t seen the movie and don’t intend to follow the above link to the synopsis, basically you have a guy who is laid off, divorced, beaten down, and just plain sick and tired of the BS out there in the world. By BS I mean getting mugged by a gang, a store owner who won’t make change for a buck so you can use his pay phone then gouges you on a candy bar so that you still don’t end up with any change (yeah, I know, a bit outdated what with cell phones and all, but you get the idea), traffic jams caused for no reason other than the fact the people with entitlement issues are being assholes… Well, finally this guy cracks and fights back. Granted, it gets pretty bad in the end, (what he does, not the movie itself – I think the movie was great) but, in any case, I’ll let you watch the movie to find out those details…

    So… Here I am, on the raggedy edge… No, wait, that was from Serenity… Wrong movie… good movie.. no, actually it was a GREAT movie… but not the one I am referencing right now…

    So, here I am… Pretty much feeling like D-FENS… No, I haven’t been laid off (actually, I have a contract to fulfill with my publisher, so that means I still have a job – even though book sales are way down in the current economy, but that’s a different blog)… And, I’m not divorced nor am I in any danger of being so (unless, of course, EK has plans I don’t know about…) But, I have been dealing with the whole entitled asshole thing…

    You see, I just got back from grocery shopping for the Yule bash this weekend. I wasn’t even able to finish the shopping because I simply couldn’t take any more… In fact, I was on the verge of re-enacting a few scenes from Falling Down right there in the Shop ‘n Save. Fortunately, since I DO still have a wife and a kid and a job, I have too much to lose, therefore I had the good sense to just head for the checkout stand, pay for my cartload and leave…

    But, to give you an idea… As I was politely making my way down the aisles, moving to the side and allowing people to pass whenever I needed to stop, or waiting for folks to finish before trying to get past them myself, I was faced with assholes. People who would ram my cart as I politely waited for the old lady in front of me to finish putting something into her own cart…

    They would ram MY cart, push past me, then ram the old lady’s cart in order to rush past her. Then guess what? They’d stop 15 feet up the aisle – in the MIDDLE of the friggin’ aisle – and would they get something off the shelf and move on? No… They’d stand there blocking the aisle while carrying on a LOUD conversation with someone via cell phone. ‘Giiiiirrlrllllllll, I be tellin’ you he be yadda yadda…etc… etc…yadda…’

    However, I DID figure something out during all of this – These assholes don’t use the words ‘excuse me’ because they don’t know what they mean. I tested the theory several times by politely saying excuse me while trying to get around them, and was merely stared at like I had grown an extra head. Obviously, ‘excuse me’ is spoken in a foreign language where they are concerned.

    If that was all that occurred it wouldn’t be so bad – even though said incident happened MULTIPLE times within the span of 1 hour with different assholes involved each time – but, it doesn’t stop there. I had an idiot bean me with an eight pound ham because he tossed it into the bin without bothering to look first. When I looked up  he stared at me like it was my fault for being there.

    There were several other incidents, but I don’t want to bore you with a neverending rant… Suffice it to say, I was pushed to the point where I was imagining myself in D-FENS’s position, and thinking I would do pretty much the same thing he did (see movie – or at the very least the synopsis – for details)

    Of course, to add insult to injury, even though I decided to check out and ‘go home’ rather than lay waste to everyone in my path, someone still found it necessary to push in front of me while I was standing in the checkout line.

    While I refrained from picking up the nearest blunt object and beating her to death with it, I let her know in no uncertain terms what she’d done… Then, just to be an asshole myself, I told her with as much sarcasm as I could muster (and them some), “But you just go ahead…don’t mind me.”

    I guess I had a pretty wild D-FENS kind of look in my eye, because she said, ‘ummm, oh, ummm, no…’ then pulled out of the line and went to the checkout stand at the far end of the store which happened to be much closer to the front door.

    It could have been the look in my eyes… It could have been the tone of my voice… It might even have been my posture… But, somewhere in the back of my head I have to wonder if it was all because she had once seen the movie in question combined with the fact that I simply stood there muttering, ‘I just want to go home…’

    Yeah, something tells me that might have been it… And, I think she wanted to put some distance between us and be within reach of an exit in the event that I might Fall Down

    More to come…

    Murv