BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

So… Just got back from a family vacation. E K and I haven’t taken too many of those in recent years… Well… In sorta recent years. You see, it goes like this – After the o-spring was born, vacations weren’t terribly feasible, what with us being “old parents” and not wanting to drag an infant, then toddler around on long trips. Besides, have you ever seen how much crap you have to carry around for an infant/toddler?

Then after that, I was spending tons of time away from home on tour, so the last thing I wanted to do was get on the road, or an airplane, to go somewhere. I just wanted to be HOME.

However, as the o-spring has grown older, the economy and changes in the book industry have reduced the amount of touring I do, and other silliness has occurred, over the last few years we have started to take family vacations.

Ahhhh… Nice… Relaxing… Well, not always. There’s a lot of hurry up, rush, rush, rush involved in vacationing. However, we definitely try to make it as relaxing as possible.

At any rate, this year we used some vouchers I had picked up from being bumped from flights while on tour, and turned them into a 6 day getaway in The Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. In the coming weeks I’ll be posting pics and detailing some of the more interesting – and sometimes funny – moments of our adventure. However, for now I am going to relate to you a few links of places we visited, and my “Twitter Travelogue” for those of you who might not follow me there or on Facebook (also because some of the texted tweets never made it to the web due to cell phone issues)… At any rate, the following is captured from my cell phone (note – the embedded links will take you to info or websites about specific locations, etc):

At cattle yard waiting for jet-propelled, wing-ed semi. Skipped breakfast. Dunkin’ Donuts in my very near future. 😀 6:53 AM  6/12

Dead pig croissant installed. Mmm good… Coffee being installed NOW… 7:16 AM  6/12

In airplane, everybody can hear you sneeze… 10:07 AM  6/12

On ground Salt Lake City. 3 hour layover. Was going to shop for an extra wife, but E K said NO.  10:12 AM  6/12

Squatters “Captain Bastard’s” Oatmeal Stout… A. Loots should be JEALOUS! 10:50 AM  6/12

Squatters Pub at Salt Lake City Airport… Mentos would love this place… 11:38 AM  6/12

Longest leg of flight, small airplane. Shortest leg (under 1 hour), big
airplane. E’splain that one, Rucy… O_o  12:35 PM  6/12

There’s a bookstore next to my gate. I wonder if they have anything by that Sellars guy? 12:51  6/12

Onboard cattle car. The “Loud” FAMILY seated behind me. :-< 1:25 PM 6/12

 

Beefalumps and mountains EVERYWHERE! I don’t think I’m in Missouri anymore.  12:01 PM  6/13

Sorry for the lack of updates. They took me up into the mountains last night, but this morning I es-cop-ayed! 12:15 6/13

I’m like wayyy closer to the clouds than normal… It’s kinda spooky… 12:21 PM 6/13

Whooa! I think I just saw a whole mess of those airplane eating cloud monsters from the Shatner Twilight Zone episode… 12:25 PM  6/13

Fellow authors, research note: a chase scene inside Jackson Hole airport in Wyoming probably won’t work. Too small. 12:43 6/13

Mucho excellent lunch at Snake River Brewing Pub. www.snakeriverbrewing.com. Killer fish & chips and an excellent black & tan! 2:26 PM  6/13

In Wyoming lookin’ for a liquor store… 2:39 PM 6/13

Shades of an adventure movie, Batman! I’m riding a funicular tram! 3:02 PM  6/13

On tram. Trapped at top in thunder-sleet storm because of lightning. No sh*t. How cool is this! 3:19 PM 6/13

Back down off the mountain. Hammered a Red Bull. Heading for Moose… Town or mammal, not sure which… 4:23 PM  6/13

What happens when two unstable air masses collide in the mountains? Pretty much the same thing that happens at sea level, only way colder 6:23 AM 6/14

“The Mask” 2011 – A vacationing author’s CPAP mask disassembles itself in the middle of the night. Hilarity ensues. (R) Language  6:40 AM  6/14

Rafted the Snake River with a philosopher named Steve. His advice: It’s all about the unknowns. Embrace yours… 1:05 PM  6/14

Following the advice of the great Snake River Philosopher Steve, I am now ascending Signal Mountain. In a car. I’m not crazy ya’know… 4:46 PM 6/14

Made pretty pictures of mountains. Played hide ‘n seek with ground “skwirlz.” Now having a Starbucks DS from the Gen Store. 7:36 PM 6/14

Ate Elk. Drank Scotch & Irish coffee. Visited with rather large Grizzly bear & took his picture. AMAZING sunset over Tetons. Pics taken. Bed 10:00 PM 6/14

Blue sky over the Tetons this morning. AWESOME view! On tap – Breakfast, hike, lunch, then North into Yellowstone… 7:26 AM  6/15

Please excuse the odd timing of updates. Cell service has been dicey, and my phone just empties the outbox whenever it gets a signal… 😐 7:31 AM 6/15

At Jenny Lake. Forest is here too… JEH-NAYYY! 10:59 AM 6/15

Yes. Bears DO poop in the woods. 11:00 AM 6/15

Yellow-bellied Marmot, ain’t askeered. Moose on path, no “skwirl” though… 12:56 PM 6/15

Gal in miniskirt & heels (not E K) on mountain hike. That’s dedication… 1:46 PM 6/15 (FYI – this was NOT a joke tweet…)

I forgot. Here in the valley, curvature of the Great Divide prevents my text signal from reaching you. You’ll have to entertain yourselves 10:00 PM  6/15

Running Bear Pancake House, West Yellowstone, MT – Too much food, even for a fat guy like me. Tell ’em Missouri Merp sent you… 7:32 AM  6/16

In a big country, la la la la-la. Montana… If your sky is missing, they probably have it… 12:00 6/16

Contrary to rumor, I have NOT been eaten by a bear. Bison, however, could be a different story… 12:00 6/16

 

Egg beater into Salt Lake all good. Now flight home overbooked. Not this time,  Delta. No effin’ way… 7:35 PM  6/17

On ground STL… 12:13 AM  6/18

So there you go… Vacation via Twitter. Details and pics coming soon…

More to come…

Murv

Over the past few days folks have probably taken note that I’ve been somewhat busy with cleaning, shopping, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, sho… Well, you get the idea.

I’ve been, to say the least, busy. And, as I have noted on my various social networks, this “bizzy” came about not only from the writing I’ve been doing, but also from my preparations for the Festival of Luetsencurbenpuken.

As you may have guessed – because you may be one of the folks I am about to mention – folks (that’d be the folks I’m mentioning) have been leaving comments and dropping me emails, most often with the question: “

“Hay! Merv. Cellers. Whot thee f*ck is Loosencrippenfahrvegnugget?”

Okay… Well maybe the spelling and grammar weren’t quite THAT bad. But anyway, suffice it to say I’ve received many a, “What the hell is that?” email. So, with today being the final day of Luetsencurbenpuken, I thought perhaps I’d give everyone an explanation.

Luetsencurbenpuken (Loots – en – curb – en – puke- en) n. – A three day holiday celebrated by a small group of  Saint Louis residents, taking place in relative proximity to the Winter Solstice (December 21-22) each year. Marked by colorful signage, abundant alcohol, food, raucous singing and the obsequious worship of a petite redhead wearing black patent leather. A traditional bonfire is required for proper celebration, and the first day of the festival is started with “The Chopping Of The Wood” followed by “The Drinking Of The Dry Dirty Martini.” Margaritas – frozen, of course – can be substituted for the Martini, however the two tasks must be done outdoors in sub-freezing temperatures, while wearing shorts and a hoodie. Overt and constant adulation of the redhead is a must. On the second night of the festival, the real fun begins.

Now, I could certainly leave it at that. After all, now you know what Luetsencurbenpuken is. However, I’m sure you wonder just exactly how this particular holiday came to be in the first place. Well… Let me tell you a story.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LUETSENCURBENPUKEN

Believe it or not, Luetsencurbenpuken is not a new holiday. It has been around almost since the dawn of time. But, it wasn’t always called Luetsencurbenpuken. To understand its roots we have to go back a bit in history. We won’t go all the way back to the dawn of time though. We’ll just flip the calendar pages a few hundred years into the past.

Ritual Mock Beheading Of The "Pie Man" - Traditional Luetsencurbenpuken Party Game

During the time of the Roman Empire when a bunch of toga wearing, $5 pizza making, nutjobs were fornicating, stabbing each other, and farting in public bathtubs, they also celebrated a holiday around the Winter Solstice that they called Saturnalia. Historians have speculated that this was due to a script that was found for a popular serial play of the age called, “Lost in Carpathia,” in which a family, along with a guide and a demented former Senator went forth in a huge chariot dubbed Saturn II, ostensibly to visit with the Carpathians. However, due to a scroll malfunction – caused by the former Senator – they became hopelessly lost and wandered about in a futile attempt to return to the aqueducts. The plot of this serial play may seem familiar to those of you who recall the hit 60’s television show, Lost in Space. In order to get around the Aristotle Plagiarism act of 723, they renamed the spaceship Jupiter II but pretty much used the same scripts, although slightly updated. But… This really isn’t  about the Romans and a date that I pulled out of my arse.  In reality, this is about the Mumbling Drelts.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Mumbling Drelts, they are an ancient people who came into existences after some wayward Mummers interbred with some wayward Druids. These “Mummids,” as they were known, traveled a short distance to sack a village of Celts, whereupon they had their way with the women. The women, being smarter, poisoned them, beheaded their carcasses, and put their heads on poles, whereupon they danced around them into the night, attempting to yodel. This is where the legend of the Banned She, (later to become Banshee) is thought to have originated.

Afterward, with not much of a village left and no visible means of support, they lived their lives out as a band of wandering burlesque performers, picking up jobs as paid assassins on the side. However, as there was no reliable birth control back then, several of them had become pregnant via the unfortunate “way having.” These women gave birth to a whole new raft of folks. They, in turn, interbred and became the Mumbling Drelts.

The reason you don’t hear much about them is that they died out over a period of 200 or so years due to the fact that they would repeatedly beat themselves over the head with rocks for no apparent reason. (Of NOTE – as you will discover later – renowned sexual anthropologist Dokter Brunhilda has published a paper which may support the theory that the self-flagellation with rocks was a misguided form of masturbation, as there is already solid evidence that such activities did, in fact, occur as a foreplay-esque prelude to copulation. See article – International Journal of Anthropological Kinkiness, Issue 69, May, 2007.)

But on with the story.

You see, while the Romans were fornicating at Saturnalia, the Mumbling Drelts were celebrating the Solstice holiday in their own fashion. Throughout the year they would gather berries and grains, which they would then turn into a mash, ferment, and then bottle. They would also distill a portion. The resultant highly alcoholic concoctions were then imbibed at the Winter Solstice  Office Party, which usually happened on the weekend nearest the Solstice proper, since everyone needed to be off work for a couple of days in order to enjoy the festivities.

And this is how the holiday of Luetsencurbenpuken was first known by the name, DRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL!

You see, DRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! was the drunken cry they would make at the moment the first of them became so inebriated that he, or she as the case may be, began to, well, drool. Why? Because they were drunk and drooling. And, since the Mumbling Drelts had no written language, this tradition was handed down orally. But, this is a family blog so we won’t get into that.

At any rate, once they died out, it seemed that the holiday of DRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! was gone forever…

Except (saw that coming, right?)…

A Rare Snapshot Of The Luetsencurbenpuken Queen - AKA She Of Red Hair And Patent Leather

Except that a nomadic camel dealer by the name of Mortimer “Mort” Farhquar had come upon one of these celebrations in his travels and been invited to join the Mumbling Drelts for some boozin’ and droolin’. Mort liked the tradition so much that he passed it along to his kin, except that because of the verbal language barrier and a slight hearing problem he had picked up during a freak camel spitting incident, he interpreted DROOOOOLLLLL! as “Yoooollllll!”

Hence, the holiday of Yoooollllll was created. As years wore on and language evolved, this was shortened to Yule, and became the preferred winter holiday of folks around the world.

Now, you’d think the story would end there, but if it did it wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

Fast forward back to the here and now. Well, the here and then, actually. I met the redhead (see blog entries about courtship, marriage, etc for background) and one of the things we would do each year is have ourselves a “Christmas Open House” sort of party. Well, as things would go, we ended up competing with other friends who were having the same, and didn’t want to end up REALLY competing, if you get my drift. Therefore, we moved our Christmas Open House back a bit, and turned it into a Yule celebration for close friends who were able to embrace the idea of dredging up the holiday of the Ancient Mumbling Drelts.

Of course, being modern folk and all, we live in a suburban area. Therefore we endeavored to keep things on an even keel so that no police would be called on us for yelling DRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! at all hours of the night and early morning.

That is, until we met Missus Loota-Chack… AKA Anastasia Luettes.

As it turns out, a DNA test revealed that Anastasia is actually descended from the Ancient Mumbling Drelts themselves. It seems that they did not all die out. In fact, one couple, Frodis and ShaNayNay Bushplucker, experienced an epiphany during intercourse and ceased to beat one another over the head with large rocks as a form of foreplay. And, it is from this “Adam and Eve” pair, if you will, of Mumbling Drelts that the lineage continued.

However, Missus Loota-Chack married up to a wonderful German guy, who likes food, and worships the Patent Leather Redhead with reckless abandon, doing any and all chores she demands, even before she demands them. So much so, in fact, that he tends to make me look bad at times. Fortunately, I am busy with other tasks prescribed by her evilness, and therefore I don’t get kicked to the curb.

And speaking of the curb…

Traditional Luetsencurbenpuken Signage

Several years back, Missus Anastasia and Mike “Yes Mistress Kat, May I Please Have Another” Loota-Chack were at our annual Yule celebration, just as they had been in the past. However, this particular year, Anastasia had been spending an enormous amount of time researching her rediscovered roots. That, and having odd, lurid fantasies about redheads, jumper cables, and low amperage battery chargers, but that’s another part of the story we won’t get into here. She claims that because of this research – although our theory is that it had more to do with the fantasies – she neglected to eat during the morning of the first day of the holiday. Fact is, she neglected to eat at all that day. Not just the morning.

However, in order to continue fueling the redhead and jumper cable thing going on in her head, she began drinking at around 3AM. The day before. Heavily. Therefore, by the time she arrived at Casa de la pelirroja, she was schnockered. I mean gone. She didn’t have three sheets to the wind, she had one sheet and she was tangled in it.

Then she ate.

Then she drank some more.

Then she stripped naked and danced on the dining room table while singing in a blend of French, Irish Gaelic, Swahili, and some dead Slavic dialect nobody else knows. All we were really able to understand was the chorus which went something on the order of, “Spank me, Oh Spank Me, You Fool, You Fool…”

Of course, none of us spanked her. Dollar bills were tossed on the table, however, while our friend Johnny “The Bologna Man” Seitz continued to eat his dinner while occasionally shouting, “GoDdAmM Luettes!”

Several minutes into the naked can-can, Anastasia suddenly stopped. Looked at all of us with her eyes bugging out of her head, then screamed at the top of her lungs, DRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! Achtung! Cac capaill! FEK FEK FEK!

Which, of course, is the holiday cheer of the ancient Mumbling Drelts, followed by something in German, Irish Gaelic, and Colloquial Irish Slang that loosely translates to: Attention! Horse Sh*t! F#CK, F#CK, F#CK!

Upon bellowing she ran naked out the front door and into the streets – icy, snowy, cold streets, mind you – and screamed DRROOOOOOOOLLLLLLL! repeatedly as she zipped around the neighborhood, with an embarrassed Mike following after her. The rest of us were highly amused by the sight once we got over our initial shock.

On her eleventyish pass down our street, she came to a sudden halt, much like the roadrunner in those cartoons. She was across the street, next to our neighbor’s house, and she suddenly pitched over and ralphed the contents of the pre-dinner appetizers and 36 hours of drinking onto the curb – as well as a portion of his yard. Of note, grass will still not grow there to this day.

After that it was all over but the crying.

Much like grandma being “runned over” by a reindeer (or molested at the airport by the TSA, as the case may be) we’ve never been able to forget the events of that night. Therefore in honor of it, we renamed the annual Yule celebration to Luetsencurbenpuken (kinda makes a little sense now, doesn’t it?) and decorate accordingly.

And there you have it. From my fingers to your brainpan. Thing is, I was here and had to witness it firsthand, so don’t complain. I had it way worse than you.

Hopefully, I’ll have some pics from Luetsencurbenpuken 2010 to post in the next blog. Provided Anastasia leaves her clothes on this year…

Also of note, Luetsencurbenpuken is immediately followed by, and sometimes will literally encompass on one of the three days, the high holiday of Luetsengottenolderen.

But that’s another story…

More to come…

Murv