When Next We Ever Meet ... Please Don't Touch Me!

NOTE: MY BASTARD BLAH-UGH! IS NOT FORMATTED PROPERLY, SO THIS THING IS ALL RUNNING TOGETHER. I THOUGHT I'D HAD GOOD INTERACTIONS WITH THE HOMELAND SECURITY PEOPLE ON PLUM ISLAND THIS WEEK, BUT APPARENTLY NOT!! NEXT TIME I'LL BRING DONUTS .......................... By this point I should just officially notify everyone that I hate to shake hands. It really makes me uncomfortable with rare exception. (Of course I say that mainly so you can believe you’re the exception, although you’re probably not …)............... Generally speaking, I have a strong aversion to any casual physical contact, except with attractive women, and then I’m usually comfortable being touched, if not overtly groped. But where most people are concerned, I really like to stay at a distance for a variety of reasons and not have them glad-handing me, like I was so many ripe tomatoes or a bag of frozen soup................ The worst place it comes up, of course, is in the work world. There, if one intends to move forward in the hunt for green opportunities, one must be ready to shake a few hands. It’s whorish—we all recognize that—but that’s what they mean when they say you have to “get your hands dirty” in order to make a living................ Socially, however, I see every reason to try and curb this practice. Fortunately, as I’ve found myself moving (albeit gracefully) toward middle early later adulthood, I find I care much less about faux impressions and am learning to protect myself from humanity at large. “I don’t want to shake hands,” I’ve boldly told several people lately when they’ve made the attempt, one of whom was a stranger and I guess will remain so................ “Sorry, I can’t shake hands right now,” I tried with a few others, mumbling something incoherent about being injured and dirty. That usually works well and even draws some sympathy, which is always a welcome commodity in any sociopath’s world. The only problem is, one then has to keep rubbing their hand as if it continues to bring pain, or has to treat it as if it’s infected with some weird bacteria that you don’t want to touch to any other part of your body, thus demonstrating why you spared that good-souled hand-shaker your cooties................ Another tactic I use is simply ignoring the outstretched hand, which sometimes works very well. I turn away and bluster some witty pontifications about how humorous the weather can be, what with its sun and rain. By the time I turn back, they’ll often have grown tired of holding their anticipating hand out—and while my heart sometimes feels a pang for that quick dropped look of disappointment they display, I subsequently try to do my chipper part to buoy their deflated spirits with more bluster about the wind and hail................ Another contact item that I find especially offensive is the hand wipe on the shoulder or back. While it sometimes comes from authentic affection, it doesn’t always, and I’m too dumb to differentiate, so it’s in my best interest to avoid the whole thing. This is a popular tactic of politicians and entertainment industry people, who do a great deal of handshaking and try however they can to wipe off each contact as fast as possible. Look for it—it’s a two-step process that involves first the handshake, then the same hand on the shoulder or back, with the quick wipe. (It’s nearly impossible to duck under it, and these pros use a hypnosis tactic to district you when they do it.)............... At the end of the day, it remains in my best interest to stay home more often. There I only have to contend with the cats, and I have complete control over them and their tails................ So, going forward I want you to understand the situation. It’s not that I’m not happy to see you—although I’m honestly not entirely sure I am—but let’s do our best to confine our connection to the mental and spiritual planes …............... It’s not that I don’t love you. I’m merely repulsed by your very presence!

Jarret's FFF - "The Defiled - We Are All Meat"

August 8, 2012: Just when you think you've seen it all, a movie like "The Defiled - We Are All Meat" comes along and reboots your reality. Actually I'm somewhat hesitant to even call it a movie. It's almost more like a bit of strange videotape that someone shot and managed to wrangle onto a DVD. You see, I found this very alluring zombie compilation at my wonderful local library called the Zombie Horror Fright Fest. Four movies! How can you beat that, and from the titles and pictures on the back -- "Woods of Terror" and "Fast Zombies with Guns" among them -- I really thought I'd found something remarkable. (We won't even START on trying to understand WHY my library stocked this weird item, but to me it's merely a credit to their awesome video section and its kind caretakers, who are among the few, rare people who treat me with any respect, despite my inability to ever get anything back on time.) Anyway, it was promising enough at first -- an appropriately moody black-and-white piece that began with your quintessential Romero-esque zombie stumbling through the woods on the wooden legs of a British punk rock guitarist, the way they do (the good zombies, I mean). He even looked like the classic first zombie in Night of the Living Dead, with the tall grey crewcut, casual jacket and face like my mailman. It wasn't long, however, before it all took a strange turn, beginning in about the first 90 seconds when apparently what was this guy's zombie family joined him at the side of a pond to lap up some water and grunt at each other. I mean, it couldn't have been dumber, despite the good make up. His son was more dog than zombie, and proudly bearing his one X'ed-over eye, he hobbled around on four legs and kind of barked. The daughter, meanwhile, made the most incessantly annoying whining sound, like Felix Unger. Things picked up at about Minute 12, however, when, after a sizable amount of zombie pantomime that reminded me of Raquel Welsh in One Million B.C., or Ringo's wife Barbara Bach in Caveman, the father and son find a pre-wrapped dead body in a tent for some reason, which we never actually get a good look at, but they bring it home to this odd structure in which they live, which is kind of some sticks tied together, and they eat it. This seems to be a key pay-off moment, and the director -- who I believe also shot, edited, wrote, produced and possibly acted in the film -- seemed to really relish the moment of some classic old-school zombie wolfing down. This includes one rather sexual moment, when the father zombie is kind of erotically having his wife suck down some stuff out of a very phalic sausage-like part -- I have to assume the intestines. Anyway, the film really gets entirely weird when the dog boy awakens in the middle of the night to see his father violently humping Zombie Mom from the back. It really brings disturbance to some new levels, and that's not even taking into account that the mom is on the verge of dropping her zombie baby. So then the next morning, when you're expecting the son to rape his sister -- and I'm still not entirely sure he DOESN'T, because these clothes are thrown down, but it's not clear whose they are -- the sister starts making that incessanty whining sound and the Dog Son begins losing his guts or something -- some parts come out of him, and the father tries to stuff them back in, but they won't go ... So then the daughter whines even more and she dies. It turns out that the dead body they ate was spoiled with some toxic waste or something that the guy had in the tent with him. And then, right after the wife dies, the mutated baby suddenly pops out. I'll be honest: this is as far as I got before my daughter came home and I got scared she'd see me watching it. In fact, I felt like I had the worst kind of demented porn or something in the player, and I fumbled it out with a wealth of fearful shame. Of course I wouldn't want to give the ending away, but at the same time, I'm not completely sure I want to know what it is myself. Still, if you're looking for a disturbing piece of crap with sick sexual zombie undertones, this might be the picture for you.

Good Gravy - Part IV (4, not IV)

August 6, 2013: Okay, so I cheated a bit with Part 3, but that's among the gems I have waiting in the wings, and what better time to employ a little typographic chicanery ... And look at this -- We made it! You and I! See, we're not like the others -- the jerks! We stuck this out, and look at the reward we've received: That bouyant sense of accomplishment and accomplished sense of bouyancy, which is not to be confused with the nonsense of bouyancy, or girlancy for that matter. Here I am, in the home stretch, and all I think about is renewing my stupid movie before I go to sleep. And I am ready to go to sleep, although not necessarily to sleep. These days I've been taking tremendous heart in rereading my old James Bond books, which I do periodically, owing to my compulsive nature, desire for comfort familiarity and ongoing failure to have a life. Still, I continue to garner a range of great living lessons from the mind of Ian Fleming -- everything from the sexual subordinance of women involved with spies, to the exotic wonder of Blue Mountain coffee. I'm also still winding down from my 11 o'clock night jog, which I just spent 45 minutes doing, which has got to be some kind of record for me, in part because this time I ran on my feet. And believe me, my feet are killing me, and I don't even like feet, although I tolerate mine because they get me into places I might not otherwise be invited. One of the great mysteries in life for me remains how and where (and perhaps even when) to find suitable comfortable supportive shoes that also make me look like James Bond. (Women love men who wear shoes, by the way, especially on their hands.) Another thing I've got to settle is this business of why some of the stars in the night sky seem to be slightly askew. This logically doesn't make sense, but I've got my suspicions that the same people who are tapping my phones are involved with some kind of star-moving project. Yes, I know it sounds highly unlikely, but you go outside right now and tell me if Anteres is where it's always been.

Good Gravy - Part III (Three, not One Hundred & Eleven)

August 6, 2013: Do you know your nanny was on her i-phone? It’s true, I saw her. While you left your precious bundle of boo-boo in the stroller this morning hoping Nanny would tend to all their needs with the same careful nut-butter that you employ in this domestic chicanery when you’re not rushing off to corporate stardom, your Nanny—Yes, your Nanny—the one who’s either Jamaican or Russian or German or Haitian or goes to college—your bloody Nanny was i-phoning herself into a pointless and demented euphoria while your bundle of precious sat silently stooped in the stroller with a dumb look of helpless amazement at how someone in such close proximity could not be interacting at all for such a long, long time. I know, I know. You’re really glad to hear this. Me too, because it means that your child is getting conditioned to the new world in which we live. Once again it’s morning in America and the harvest of our many decisions is coming due again. Yippee! Hurrah! Huzzah! But nannies aren’t the only ones devoting their frail attention to keep our kids in line for a better tomorrow. I can’t tell you how many mothers I see nowadays out for power strolls with their progeny gluing all the attention they can into that marvelous cellular device. The kids look befuddled of course, but that’s part of the training curve, and we all know the good things this conditioning is leading to. Yippee! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Good Gravy - Part II (2, not 11)

August 6, 2013, again: Well, it worked. I saw it with my own eyes ... and this brings us to the second part of an ongoing series that's only vaguely related to gravy. And needless to say, I already find myself regretting this whole commitment. I mean, why do I feel any allegiance to any of you to devote my time to doing this? During my six-week absence, did even one of you think to ask about my welfare, except perhaps Cara M., who was pleasant to me at Starbuck's recently but in the end only wanted me to buy her a latte. Damnit, what is with you people?! Is that all this Blah-ugh! is to you? A joke? Something to AMUSE you?! ... Well, if that's the case, you're far worse off than I ever imagined. Which brings me to another question of whether, if I were gay, would I fall harder over Tom Cruise or Denzel Washington? It's a close race, as you know. Anyone who's seen Jack Reacher, which really has to be the gayest name, would have to bet on Tom. It's a delightful movie with great examples of mystery and violence, and it just left me grinning from ear to ear. And yet my recent history involves a couple of enjoyable Denzel -- (and by the way, what the hell kind of name is that?!) pictures that had me admiring not only his acting ability, but his ease with both wearing a suit and blowing up cars. This one called Man on Fire is about this guy -- this man, actually -- who becomes really angry and sort of figuratively catches fire and starts killing everyone. It's all happy, really, because we're all rather in agreement that he should be killing everyone because they're all these evil types and they caused him to catch fire (figuratively). (Part of it involved them shooting him, and none of like to be shot.) For me the story culminated when he put a large explosive device up a man's rectum and gave him three minutes to answer some questions before he blew him up. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, it worked on so many levels. On the opposite side of these films, I rewatched some old movies that I used to swear by and I was really kind of disappointed to find how lame they were. Among these were The Omen, The Seven-Ups, The Boys from Brazil, and most recently The Marathon Man. What is it with movies with "The" in the title?! These were films my memory saw as so exciting and interesting, but when I sat my son down recently and, over several nights, forced him to watch these, he was hardly smitten. It's was almost comical, in fact, to see what the industry got away with in terms of quality back in the 1970's. The Boys from Brazil in particular was just so much unchewed Strasbourg sausage, and while I liked the part where he attacks the guy at the dance and then later tends his wounds, it just didn't hold butter. But I digress and it's getting late, and I still need to renew a movie online. Let's see if I make a Part 3 after all ...

Good Gravy - Part I

August 6, 2013: Something is seriously wrong with my Blah-ugh! site. I've known for some time the H.S. people were monitoring my phone calls and sending high-frequency tonal messages to my brain, but I didn't think they'd have the audacity to screw up my composition page ... So now I'm attempting to get word out through the HTML (whatever that is) and I feel not unlike a trapped victim of war working with the underground trying desperately to send coded messages out to the free world. The only difference is my messeages are stupid and involve things like bosoms and movies, and not tyranny. That all said, I was taken agog to realize I'd neglected my Blah-ugh! for so long. There have been so many developments -- so many entries I've composed in my head and was too tired and lazy to transcribe, such as one about terns. But my intention is to make it up to your right now by composing -- Yes, get ready for this! -- a complete Four-Part Blah-ugh! ... I know, I know. I've never even considered attempting something like this, let alone attempted it, let alone completed it, but that's all going to change tonight like the history this is. Of course, I don't want you to necessarily thing they're going to be very good, or of any substantial length, but if all goes according to my crazy plan, there will be four new posting on this shithole, I mean on this site before the night is through ... So sit back, tune up your fingers and reading eyeballs, and get ready for the first part to come to a close, because that was it.