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Jim Krakowski’s House of Mass Produced Trippy Shit for Stoned Teenagers

Howdy do, fellow duuuuuuuude!
You on druuuugs?
I know I am.
Are you tired of staring at the same old lava lamps and black light posters and other junk from Spencer’s while you’re on druuuuuugs?

Do those things no longer seem toooooootally trippy?

Well, maaan, have I got just the thing for you!

Hi, I’m Jim Krakowski!

Crow language educator, globe smasher, erotic author, and now, panderer to drug users!

Ha-ha!

If you crave new mass produced fake intellectual fake art to gaze upon, dead eyed and slack jawed, while you listen to terrible music, you need – NEED! – to come on down to Jim Krakowski’s House of Mass Produced Trippy Shit for Stoned Teenagers!

We’ve got it all!

Black light posters featuring new stoner favorites, like cats and whatever!

Lava lamps, but with a slightly different shape!

Incense burners made of clay crudely sculpted into something resembling the hideous noggin of David Matthews or whoever is his modern day equivalent!

Beads and junk!

Clothes with labels that say they are made with locally, organically sourced hemp but are probably some type of burlap!

Glass bongs so huge and elaborate that only Seth Rogan or a successful drug dealer can afford them!

Legal drugs that might make you feel like you might maybe feel a little weird somehow! In candy form!

You name it, we’ve got it!

So, shake the Utz potato chips crumbs out of your terrible beard and come on down to Jim Krakowski’s House of Mass Produced Trippy Shit for Stoned Teenagers, located in that building that used to be an ice cream place and then was a really sketchy looking daycare for a while before becoming a really sketchy looking car dealership and then was vacant for a decade and is now my store!

Come on! Up you go! You can do it, you lazy post-zelleniall, depression ravaged internet borg! Pornhub will still be there when you get back! Thaaaaat’s right, off your parents couch and right on over to Jim Krakowski’s House of Mass Produced Trippy Shit for Stoned Teenagers!

See you in a bit!

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Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt

Hello, friends. Welcome to another very special episode of The Irrationally Exuberant. So, three or four weeks ago I sat in my kitchen and, under the watchful, semi-mocking eyes of my wife and children, spit into a tube until I could spit no more, then mailed it off to the good folks at 23andMe to be tipped and toppled and spunned and broken down, analyzed and digitized and turned into data in an easy to read e-document detailing the very building blocks of the meat machine that is Reid Messerschmidt, as well as some information on the meat machines that proceeded me, my ancestors.

It had never occurred to me to do this before. I’m an artist, goddamnit! A man of feelings and knowledge! What business of mine is my disgusting body? And god knows I love a good story, but my ancestors? I’ve known a good swath of them over the years and, while some of them are great and a few I really love, there’s not a one whose kinship is a matter of personal pride. Gratitude, sure, but not pride. Still, my wife, understandably, I suppose, wanted to know what horrible syndromes and diseases would ultimately kill us and our children.

“Listen,” I said. “I know I’ve probably given my beloved offspring Clinical Depression and Alcoholism, do we really need to delve further? They’re going to start resenting my building blocks.”

She believed we did, and I was not uncurious, so a kit was ordered. Everything that could be known about me would now be revealed for a paltry $125. I only hoped it wouldn’t ruin my life, send me spiraling down a depressive, dissociative abyss, ultimately leading to madness.

On the other hand, I’d heard of people finding out their father’s were not really their father’s, and that sounded appealing.

Well, all of that information is now here, in front of me, in an email that I have printed out, because I am old fashioned, even at the expense of our fragile ecosystem.

Some of the information – most of it – is unsurprising. The genetic scientists in their corporate laboratory have discovered that it is likely that I have dark brown hair, blue eyes, and a taste for sweets. Bullseye! These things are true. They also found it likely that I have a muscular, athletic build. This is slightly less true. They further determined that I am unlikely to transmit a propensity for any horrible syndrome or diseases to my kids. Aside from the Clinical Depression and Alcoholism, of course.

Lucky them!

The scientists have also discovered some relatives of mine who were also coerced into sending this deeply personal information through the mail to strangers. Some of them I am aware of. Others I am not, because they are third or fourth cousins and I could not care less about them or their building blocks.

There was no conclusive information regarding my paternity.

But, buried amid all of this semi depressing data about the fundamental makeup of myself – easily communicated in a medium length email and indicating no particular gifts or promise – is one surprising tidbit. A tidbit I had long suspected, and has now been confirmed.

I, it turns out – and you may want to be sitting down for this – come from the same genetic line as Franz Xaver Messerschmidt!

(dramatic sting)

If this doesn’t spin you into a tizzy of excitement and envy or even touch off a glint of recognition, allow me to tell you about my Uncle Franz: He was an eccentric 18th Century Austrian sculptor responsible for the famous “Character Heads”, a series of 64 tin-lead alloy and alabaster busts of his own head, each displaying a different, peculiar, often extreme facial expression.

There, you are now free to spin into that tizzy of excitement and envy.

I have known about Franz for many years. Messerschmidt is not the most common of names, and there are very few famous individuals who bear it. Really, there’s only the despicable Nazi inventor of the Messerschmitt, a German warplane prominent in WWII. The plane is spelled differently – with a tt at the end instead of the truly baffling dt concluding my surname. Doughy middle-aged men with terrible beards who are far too invested in Nazi trivia and mostly work at gas stations mostly don’t know this – the spelling difference – though, so I’m often forced into conversation with these degenerates, which has always been painful, and now, through both two masks and a half inch of plexiglass, is both painful and impractical.

Come to think of it, I don’t really know enough about this Messerschmitt fellow to call him despicable or a Nazi. It’s entirely possible that he was just a particularly gifted engineer and put together something he thought was wonderful and told his kids about and stayed up nights imagining all of the great things it could do and then it ended up a killing machine for a death cult army led by a lunatic with a memorably terrible mustache.

These things happen.

Regardless, his name is close enough that some Nazi association is to be expected, and has prevented much delving into the Messerschmidt past, as you’re sure to come across Nazis pretty quickly and nobody needs that in their life. I’m told my great grandmother had a Nazis flag in her home, and that’s about all I need.

A quick story about her, because this is my show and I’ll do what I want:

At my great grandma’s memorial service, after the funeral, the pastor – who had not known her – asked if anyone had any good memories of their time with her that they’d be willing to relate.
Nobody in a room of every living person she’d ever known said a word for a solid 3 minutes. She was an awful woman.
Finally my Dad – with his first and last selfless, heroic move – stood up, walked to the front and said, “She made good creamed peas.” Everyone solemnly nodded in agreement, sighed with relief and exited the memorial to maybe have a smoke or discuss more important things like the weather and football or how good they were at basketball in high school.

The moral of this story, like all stories with a moral, really, is don’t be an asshole.

Anyway, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt is different. First, he was not a Nazi. Maybe a Monarchist – he did some work for Austrian royalty – but that’s not so bad, in context. Second, and most importantly, he was a fucking artist, as am I. He made artistic heads by forcing earth to do his will and I make heady art by forcing words to make a podcast, which they couldn’t possibly want to do. “My god!” they must think. “Couldn’t he have made us into a beautiful poem on some paper in a book like respectable words instead of this hideous spoken nonsense broadcast into the void?”

Cram it, words, I’m in charge here, more or less.

Uncle Franz’s art has been immortalized more than mine, but I’ve no doubt that in 300 years from now someone will be creating a podcast about this show too, probably via a laudatory psychically transmitted, immersive futuristic tableaux or something. Or maybe the future is more dystopian and they’ll create the tableaux from sticks, rocks, and trash or crude drawings on the walls of a cave – the circle of life and all that. Either way, I’ve no doubt it will be a tableaux and I am honored and humbled by the gesture.

Also, Franz was a depressive recluse with a shaky hold on sanity and I’d bet dollars to donuts I’ll end up the same. I’m well on my way already, sitting in the dark, in my basement, alone, typing and doubting myself even while projecting bravado, staring into the glassy eyes of the taxidermic gator head on my desk, imagining the gator telling me that none of this is very good.

Kindred spirits, and, as it turns out, actually kin.

The moment I saw the first Character Head, as they’ve come to be called – Uncle Franz never put a name to them – I was smitten. They are deeply weird and weirdly modern. Out of context you’d assume they were an inspired conceptual project from some pre-Burroughs Bohemian of the 40s, maybe someone who made time with Buñuel or, probably more likely, given their shared nationality, Fritz Lang. One of the weird but not so weird as to be unpalatable pre-war outré art guys. A pre-irony guy with ironic leanings.

Their modernity comes from their simplicity and a very modern sense of humor, though I doubt the artist had humor in mind when he made them.

They are difficult to explain. If you want to see them, you know, the internet, obviously, but this show’s artwork also features two of the heads – the ones known as The Vexed Man (the brownish one in front with an aggressive frown), and The Yawner (the gray one in back that looks much more like he’s screaming in despair to me, but probably a lot of the power of the piece comes from the unification of existential terror and ennui or something).

The heads in the pictures are cheap, smallish imitations that I bought on Amazon – there are a few of the heads you can own for under $100, and I have all of them. I wanted them as the artwork for the show for obvious reasons – they look cool and have a personal meaning, but also as a gentle, winking siren song to anyone who actually knows who the fuck FXR is. So I set them among some plants in my yard to represent the complex relationship between man and nature and snapped some photos. I think they look nice. It’s probably some kind of Copywrite violation, but no one has caught on because, you know, who’s listening really, and besides, he’s family! And long dead.

I’ve never had the opportunity to see the real heads in person as that kind of thing doesn’t typically come anywhere near Fargo, North Dakota – at best we maybe get Norman Rockwell and Ansel Adams, at worst terrible stadium versions of long out of fashion Broadway shows and the occasional Vatican relic – but they are just over a foot tall, slightly bigger than a real head. Some are metallic, chromish – the tin/lead alloy – and some kind of an aged beige stone – the alabaster. Each is just a head and a neck – no shoulders and no detail in the eyes, giving them a kind of blank, hypnotized, disconcerting look. Some of the heads are entirely bald, with lines etched on the dome to indicate a couple days worth of hair growth. Some are only partially bald, with longish flowing hair circling the crown, pushed back behind delicate, realistic ears. The bald ones give an impression of musculature and health – almost youth, maybe some vigor – but the others are an older man, thin and deeply lined, with more birdlike features. All of their necks are excruciatingly tensed, veins and tendons and Adams Apples, sometimes an impression of a second chin, bulging as though reacting to an electric shock – which they might be, as Uncle Franz was rumored to have been good friends with Anton Mesmer – namesake of mesmerism and purveyor of a crude form of early shock therapy. That’s probably not the case, though.

The story of Messerschmidt and his heads, like any good story, is riddled in mythology and speculation, and, as with most things, I prefer the mythology. It’s more fun.

The mythology is, basically, that Franz Xaver Messerschmidt was an accomplished sculptor and benefactee of royals in 18th century Austria before going insane, losing all employment, attempting to become well via Mesmer’s new methods, failing, moving to the country, living as a recluse and sculpting head after head of his own visage in various forms of distress to ward off the evil spirits that tormented him, specifically something he called The Spirit of Proportion, and ultimately dying by his own hand in an institution, the heads all but unseen, until his brother began to sell them off to various collectors and traveling exhibitions of oddities, to be scattered across the world, then reassembled and given the names they bare today and slowly discovered and even more slowly recognized for their brilliance and kinship to modern semi-absurdist art.

It’s a good story. The fact is that many of the heads seem to be of different people – experts can only agree that one is really the artist, the one whimsically titled “The Artist As He Imagined Himself Laughing”, which depicts an aging man in a fez with a semi-mad, dead eyed smile. But the more I look at them – and I look at them a lot – the more it seems to me that they are all of the same guy, in different peaks and valleys of mental health. My image of myself varies drastically depending on my mood, it was probably the same for my dear Uncle. And artistic license – even with oneself – is to be expected.

Anyway, I don’t particularly care what the real story is. Every character in that story is long dead and why not go with the good story over the true one? I’m not, as I think I have mentioned here before, fucking Tom Brokaw, after all. This is, theoretically a comedy podcast, even if there hasn’t really been a joke in a while.

Here’s a funny story to justify my genre.

My six-year-old son and I often do would you rathers before bed. The other night he came up with, “Who would you rather eat, Hulk Hogan or a regular old man?” I think he might be a genius.

Back to Franz.

As I said, there were originally 64 heads, but only 49 are still known to exist. There’s A Strong Man, A Hypocrite and A Slanderer – his head hung low with regret, The Ultimate Simpleton – the only one with a torso connected to the head, Inflicted with Constipation, and An Intentional Wag, among others. The names may not be what the artist intended, but you have to admit that they are pretty solid, even when they don’t really describe what I see at all. Any one of them would make a tremendous band name. I imagine the heads were created in a spirit of distress, in contrast to the light hearted posthumous names which were applied to the heads by the organizer of a traveling exhibit featuring them. The traveling exhibitors – glorified carnies – were probably a fair bit more mirthful than the reclusive, insane genius.

And I don’t really have to imagine them being created in a spirit of distress. There’s some documentation that this was the case. One man – I forget his name, and it’s not important, let’s call him Kent Butnickel – made a pilgrimage of sorts to Franz’s humble home, partly out of admiration, partly out of morbid curiosity. Rumors were, he’d lost his mind.

Butnickel’s visit did, in fact, confirm that Franz had lost his mind, at least to some degree. He spent his time jabbing and pinching himself while looking in a mirror, said it was to assuage the evil spirit that was assailing him – The Spirit of Proportion. He was also up to his ears in the heads, which, as an art piece are brilliant, but to find a shut-ins cottage filled with them would be alarming. We don’t know how long Butnickel stuck around, but I can’t imagine he spent the night.

And, really, that’s all we know for sure. There’s some record of him possibly selling miniatures of the heads, and the next thing we hear is that, after his death, his brother – my great great and so on Grandfather, perhaps? – took possession of the heads.

Or did they take possession of him?!

(dramatic sting)

No, they did not, or, anyway, we have no reason to believe that they did. He eventually sold them off and went about his life, continuing the genetic line that, ultimately, would lead to me and my children, just after my Grandpa Roy, who I once tried to show a book about Franz – he did the thing he used to do where he kind of grunted and then ignored you – and who knows who else. Perhaps a future librarian or some such noble being.

Next time on The Irrationally Exuberant, we’ll delve into my first experience with psychotropic mushrooms, meeting my Uncle Franz, and realizing that I have Clinical Depression and am just not really a drug guy after all.

Don’t miss it!

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The Tom Waits Institute of Lucid Dreaming

The piano has been drinking, the piano has been drinking, not me . . .


Oh, hello. I didn’t hear you come in. I was busy writing a new hit song and preparing my brain for tonight’s, ah, lurid lucid dreams.

Name’s Tom, by the way, Tom Waits – I’m the owner of this glistening institute.

And you are?


Uh-huh. Well, I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. You’re a comely one, aren’t you?


Why don’t you pour yourself a drink, help yourself to a cigarette or two, and fold into that arm-chair under the portrait of Schlitzie the Pinhead Girl while I tell you what The Tom Waits Institute of Lucid Dreaming is all about.


Well, you’re probably asking yourself why Tom Waits, the man responsible for such landmark albums as Swordfishtrombone and Mule Variations has any interest in opening a Lucid Dreaming Institute in the first place.

A fair enough question.

You’re very astute.

The answer is simple as JoJo the Idiot Circus Clown. I’ve been a lucid dreamer since my parents left me at an abandoned bus depot in Atlantic City to live with the hobos and tramps when I was 7 years old. A tattered, one-legged bum on the lam from the law, name of Shitmouth Charlie, The Rail-yard Privateer, taught me how to do it. And I want to share the gift that Shitmouth Charlie, The Rail-yard Privateer gave me with as many folks as’d care to listen.


So, when you’re here at the Tom Waits Institute of Lucid Dreaming you’ll learn how to slide into a deep, active sleep using the music of me, Tom Waits.

I’ve been known as both a whiskey soaked beat troubadour and a rail riding industrial carnival barker, but all along the mission of my music has been to induce lucid dreams and there have been subliminal messages in these tunes starting with Closing Time.

Like my song, The Earth Died Screaming, for instance. It may seem to the untrained ear like nothing more than your typical nightmare environmentalist screed, shrieked by a drink and drug addled lunatic great grandpa, but listen closely. There’s a constant whisper behind all of that madness, telling you to be mindful and relax.


(Earth Died Screaming)


Did you here it? No? Your subconscious did.


Try this one on for size. It’s called Singapore. It was on my platinum selling album, Rain Dogs. At first listen, all you’ll hear is a hell circus hosted by a blood spitting wino with post traumatic stress disorder. But there’s more to the song than meets the eardrum, so to speak. See if you can hear the underlying message that you are safe and secure and should feel free to fully enter your dreams and experience true beauty for the first time in you life.


(Singapore)


Yeeaaah. Now you’re getting it.


Here at T-WILD we’ve created the perfect environment in which to tumble into slumber and finally know what it feels like to live without boundaries. To experience all of the enlightenment and serenity that lucid dreaming has to offer. You’ll nestle into a dusty bed of burlap and horse hair as you’re coaxed to sleep by the flashing of dozens of strobe lights and the perpetual spinning of our neverending Poe themed Merry-go-round, while my dream inducing music plays at deafening volumes.


Or, if that doesn’t suit you, you can drift into your own unconsciousness in our room of carnival freaks and clowns, now stocked with 75% more clowns, who will jump about and groan encouragement over songs such as Tango Till They’re Sore and Cemetery Polka.


It’s a real scene, let me tell you.


So, don’t waste any more time passively sleeping your life away. Awaken to the miracle of lucid dreams at the Tom Waits Institute of Lucid Dreaming. Sign up by finding me and asking about it.


Thanks for stopping by.

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Lucid Dreaming

Intro: Dream

It is light.
It is dark.
It is light again.
It is very dark.
Dusk settles - something like dusk - a queasy, night vision green, stamped with a throbbing amber moon.
It is my backyard, but it isn’t.  Josh is there and Ben and Ryan, but he’s very young, and then not Josh, and me, and Tony, and Brian Lauers, from high school, and Jake, and then Josh.
They are golfing, and then not Josh, hitting balls, and it is light, silent, and I am watching, and it is dark, and I am not me, but I am watching me, and then Josh.
And there are pigs in the yard - first the impression of pigs, followed by pulsing pig representations - and it is yellow dusk, and the pulsing pig representations are too big, and then Josh, and there is a baby that is not mine, that I need to take care of, that looks like me, and then not Josh, and then Josh, and then not Ben, and Josh is going into the neighbor’s house to take a piss and they aren’t home but the lights are on and I am furious, and then not Josh, and the pulsing pig representations are again just the impressions of pigs and they are many, and the pigs are in danger, I can feel it, and then Josh, and it is light, and the pigs are pigs now - tangible pigs - and have green eyes, and then Ben, and then not Josh, and Marshall is in the house, and I am in the house, and Josh is in the house, and then not Josh, and Kelly wafts through, blinking her eyes wildly, and it is very bright, and then Josh - and where is the baby? - and then not Josh, and I can hear an uncle in the other room, and it is very bright, and then Josh and Ben and Marshall and Tony and my brother and me and a pig and the baby and then not Josh and this doesn’t make sense,  I realize this doesn’t make sense, and I realize I’m dreaming and then it is light and everything slows down, comes into focus.  Everything is focused and still. Lucid.
The house is mine and I am lucid.
I am dreaming.  I say this aloud and the words pulse through the air in concentric circles.  I am in my kitchen.  Everything is there.  It is my kitchen, but more - ethereal, maybe.  And Josh and Ben and Tony and Ryan and Jake and Marshall and Brian Lauers and the green eyed pig are just standing still, staring at me, waiting for me to do something.  So I put a hat on the pig, with my mind.  A beautiful deep brown bowler.           Everyone smiles.
I breath.  This is my dream and I can do literally anything I want.  The laws of physics and morality do not apply to me.  I could fly through the air like a crow.  I could make Josh do things to the pig.  I could combine Josh with the pig to make a pig-Josh and have Ben do things with pig-Josh.  I could punch pig-Josh into a billion smaller pigs with spaghetti knuckles.  I don’t know what that means, exactly, but I could do it.  I could make them all perform an elaborate three part very special episode of Charles In Charge, where the pig plays Charles and Tony plays Buddy, and Buddy is experimenting with PCP, and Charles has to help him and hide it from the kids. It could be brilliant and disgusting.  And I could play Mr. Belvedere, hell, I could be Mr. Belvedere, even though he’s not even in Charles In Charge.  I could make Mr. Belvedere a member of the Charles in charge universe with my mind. Anything.  This world, as they say, is my oyster.  I could literally make this world into an oyster.
Instead, I retreat to my studio to record - this - podcast . . .

Part I: Lucid Dreaming
In 1902, Willis Carrier recorded a remarkable dream in his dream journal. Two dream descriptions in a row might be a bit much, but bare with me.

July 16th, 1902

Dearest diary,
Last night I dreamt the most remarkable dream.  To call it a dream, in fact, does it no justice.  It was more than a dream, I believe.  Vision may be the word.  Revelation, perhaps.
It began ordinarily enough. I was trudging through the disgusting streets of Brooklyn on yet another punishingly hot day, stinking to high heaven as everybody does all of the time , cursing the three piece wool suit that people of this particular point in history are cursed to wear, no matter the weather.  My god, life is a nightmare!  Good lord, the stench!  Heavens to Betsy - the rashes!  Oh, the rashes! It’s a wonder that a person ever accomplishes even the most menial of tasks whilst drenched head to toe in sticky, hot sweat, his crotch dappled and scarlet red, itching like the dickens, his olfactory sense barraged from all corners each and every moment of each and every hellish day with the ghastly odor of three million retched, reeking New Yorkers, barely holding on to consciousness as they teeter on the precipice of of heatstroke or wage a futile battle against retching from the pungency.
I was contemplating all of this, praying for the sweet relief of the Reapers refreshingly cold, gnarled touch, when a curious storefront caught my eye.  One I hadn’t noticed before, though I have made this walk innumerable times.  It was called, “Breezy Jeff’s Emporium”.  
“What kind of name is Jeff?” I thought. 
I felt compelled to step inside, so I pushed through its unornamented door.
The most wonderful thing happened as the door opened.  I was enveloped by cool, soothing air, the likes of which I have never felt before.  It was as if God himself had exhaled upon me!  I began to weep with joy.  
When I had regained my composure, I looked about myself to ascertain the nature of the establishment, but there was little to see.  The walls stood bare, and I appeared to be alone.
That is when it struck me: This must be a dream.
Surprised to find myself so aware of this fact while still in the dream state, I nearly awoke.  The store began to fade.  Not wishing to ever leave this icy paradise, I willed it back into solidity with great effort and found that I was able to move about of my own free will.
I heard a loud humming noise from the back of the store, but was unable to see its source.  I went to investigate and found, around a corner, a strange contraption which seemed to be the source of the noise and, to my amazement, the cool air.
“My God,”  I thought. “A machine that cools the air.  This could change everything!”
I had to bring this miracle to the real world!  A dipped quill and paper materialized in my hands, and I began to make sketches and notes pertaining to its construction.
Upon awakening, I immediately transcribed my dream notes. And I’ll be McKinley’s old mother if I don’t believe this thing can actually work!

I must retreat now to my laboratory to assemble a prototype.  This invention, if I am not sorrowfully mistaken, could be our cool savior from the oppressive god of heat and I must waste no time in building it!

Willis Carriers vision was not the first lucid dream recorded in history, but it very well may be the most significant, and is a fine introduction to the topic.  The invention of the air conditioner ushered in the modern age, making life bearable for the first time in human history.
How does a man discover something so consequential and practical in the non-dream world while in the dream world?  How does he gain the ability to understand that he is dreaming and act proactively within the dream?
The answers are elusive, highly controversial, and, in this podcast, wildly simplified and occasionally misrepresented.
Lucid dreaming is essentially a dream in which one becomes impassive, conscious of the dream state and able to control ones actions and surroundings within the dream.  To really understand lucid dreaming you must first understand dreaming, which no one does for sure.  You’ll get different explanations for why we dream and what, if anything, dreams mean from scientists, psychologist, religious fanatics, psychics, your mother, or the quiet guys you work with who, when they do finally talk, reveal themselves to be profoundly unpleasant.  There is very little agreement even within these groups.  One unnerving guy at the office might say that dreams are visions from god while another insists that they are representations of repressed sexual desires.  Back slowly away from both of these men.  They are the ones who make that horrible mess in the bathroom, probably.
I’m talking about you, Kurt!
A dream is essentially a hallucination - a creation of your mind.  You see things in your dreams, but not with your eyes - a real stoner mind-fuck. There’s no particular portion of the brain that these images arise from - that anyone knows of, anyway.  It’s kind of biological ocean whose depths are completely unknown to us despite its relative nearness.  
There is one theory, variations of which are currently the most pervasive, that dreams are a kind of informational sieve, a way for our brain to filter out useless information and sort the things we need, resulting in a kind of free associative hodgepodge of thoughts and images that really only seem to make sense because of our conscious tendency to string miscellaneous information into a kind of narrative.  Sort of like how if you watch a movie on mute, any music you play will seem to sync up with it.  The Dark Side of Oz phenomenon, if you will.  
It is nearly impossible to talk about dreams, apparently, without sounding like you just took a bong rip.
I have to ask, though:  If it is  truly the case that dreams are a mechanism for sorting and filtering information, why have I retained such a vast store of knowledge about the Golden Girls and Sha Na Na, but couldn’t, under any circumstance, tell you my wife’s phone number?
Either this theory is bunk or my sieve is broken.
Freud was somewhat a proponent of this explanation, though he added that dreams were a means of latent wish fulfillment and deeper revelations about oneself could be sussed out through analysis.  Those deeper revelations tended to be sex stuff.
I’d really like to get his take on which wish I was fulfilling in the dream I had where a group of monks marched into my room to tell me that Jeff Goldblum had died.
Jung largely concurred with Freud, but was much less phallocentric and posited that the existence of common dreams, which he called archetypes - flying, unpreparedness, secret rooms, Jeff Goldblum - were an expression of a unified human consciousness. 
L. Ron Hubbard, a lunatic, said that "Dreams are crazy house mirrors by which the analyzer looks down into

the engram bank.” I have no idea what that means and don’t care to find out.
There are a few things we know absolutely about dreams, specifically, which parts of the brain aren’t active during sleep. The motor cortex, for instance. It is responsible for musculoskeletal control – moving your body. When the motor cortex is stimulated during sleep – as is the case with a sleep disorder called “violent sleep”, which has been recreated in animal experiments – the dreamer will act out their dreams. Dogs will dig at the air, cats roam around, aimless and ominous, and humans have been known to attack whoever happens to be in bed with them. A prostitute named Fancy, for example.
Activity also decreases in the prefrontal regions of the brain responsible for episodic memory and integrating information. It’s the reason dreams don’t usually make a lot of sense.
I could go on – about REM sleep, neurological theories, wet dreams – but this is supposed to be about lucid dreaming, so let’s talk about that.
Here’s the thing – We don’t really know whether lucid dreaming is real. Dreams are notoriously difficult, if not impossible to monitor, so the specifics of dreams are kind of beyond us. There’s a very real chance that lucid dreams are just dreams of being lucid, not actual lucidity within a dream. The study most often cited in its favor basically consisted of a researcher telling a subject to move his eyes in a certain way in his sleep. Apparently he did, but it was just side to side.
So we are left with personal testimony, and there is certainly a lot of it.
Lucid dreamers love talking about lucid dreaming. If you begin a conversation with one, it won’t end until you’ve heard all of their tales of flying over psychedelic meadows, chatting with their dead grandpappy about the tofu situation in heaven, and bedding Khaleesi, The Mother of Dragons, and agreed that they are highly evolved mystical super-people. What they won’t tell you is that even their sweet Aunt Kathy won’t return their calls anymore. Avoid them at all costs. In fact, avoid everyone at all costs, just to be safe.
They’ll also tell you how you can become one of them. “Oh my god, you don’t meditate? You have to meditate!” They’ll tell you about looking at your hands, or flipping light switches on and off, or reading a digital clock several times a day. These are what’s known as reality checks. The idea is that if you get used to confirming that you’re not dreaming during your waking hours, the habit will persist into your dreams and you will become lucid when you realize you are dreaming.
They’ll tell you about binaural beats, beats of two different frequencies, one being fed into each ear, which create a third frequency in your brain that, theoretically, produces relaxation, concentration, and, when you’re sleeping, lucid dreams. It’s sometimes called brainwave entertainment – which may or may not also be the title of a Skirlex album, another thing I don’t care to find out – and sounds like a computer attempting Peruvian Pan Flute music.
They’ll tell you about taking B vitamins before you go to bed, as well as an exhaustive list of additional supplements that have not been approved by the FDA.
They’ll encourage you to keep a dream journal, make your own dream pillow, eat cheese before bed to have what they call, horrifyingly, “cheese dreams”, set an alarm to wake you up every 90 minutes, and wear a REM inducing mask, none of which seem conducive to any kind of sleep, let alone a deep one.
They’ll tell you that, if you do become lucid, you should “ask the dream” to let you become lucid more easily next time.
They’ll continue shouting these things at you as you slowly back away from them and they’ll chase after you when you turn and break into a dead sprint.
These people are relentless and will stop at nothing to share their inner peace.

And goddamn if I don’t want to BE one of these people. I’ve tried a good number of their methods, not as an ironic experiment, but in earnest.
I would very much like to lucid dream. It sounds amazing. Passive sleep feels like a necessary waste of time, but conscious sleep eliminates that burden. You never have to stop doing. And I want to pause that recurring dream I have where I’m lost and half nude in a massive hotel with a random assortment of acquaintances and dream people while reports of an alien invasion blast from unseen speakers and finally find that Morrissey concert in the lobby that I’ve been trying to get to for all these years. I want to explore the room in the house that I grew up in that no one knew was there. I want to hear and remember music that doesn’t exist in the real world, music that evidently lives inside me that I don’t have access to. I want to be a whale for a little while and goddammit I want to have consequence free dream sex with Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend Sloan!
Not to mention that the implications or Lucid Dreaming are pretty wild. If you are able actively alter the projections of your Id and Ego, what does that mean? Something, I’m sure of it.
So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to binge eat some cheese, strap on my dream goggles, and take a brief, hopeful nap.

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Hell

Bad news, friends. I died.

I was trudging along the banks of the Red River, as you do during an unseasonably warm North Dakota Winter. With the trees gone and the prairie grass tamped down by deer, you can get much closer to the water than in the Summer, but usually it’s colder ‘n the heart of a Saskatoon Psychopath and there’s liable to be a foot or two of snow on the ground, so you’re mostly stuck indoors, gaining winter weight.

Not this winter, though. This was a couple days after the anniversary of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor and it was still in the high 40s. Heaven on earth.

So, I was trudging along, tossing rocks and kicking out rotted stumps when I came upon a peculiar sight. There was something wedged between two bare elm trees not ten feet from where I stood. It was red and green and, this being the Holiday season, I assumed it was some kind of out of the way Christmas decoration. But I pushed on to investigate, and, to my surprise, saw three words printed in big block letters on the mystery object.

The words were these: The Phoenix Lights.

I was taken aback. Why, that very morning I’d cracked open a book on The Phoenix Lights, the most famous UFO sighting in the Americas, maybe the world.

I whispered, “Synchronicity,” because that’s what UFO weirdos do.

Convinced that I’d stumbled upon some sort of cache of secret information, finally, or, at the very least, some sort of incoherent message from The Phenomenon – I rushed toward whatever it was, and this is where I died.

My foot caught on an exposed root. I put out my hands to grab hold of a branch, and the branch snapped like a box of angel hair pasta over a bubbling pot of water. I tumbled, foot over fedora, down the river bank and on to the icy surface of the mighty Red. Shaken but okay, I stood up, brushed the dirt and cockleburs from my body, lifted a foot to ascend the bank and heard another crack – too many cracks for one day, if you ask me – felt the ice give way below me, fell backward again, and crashed through the thin ice, into the frigid, mud dark water. I felt a jolt of unspeakable cold, gasped, filled myself with water that tasted of clay, and was sucked Northward and to the bottom of Fargo’s preeminent body of water.

Next thing I remember, I was completely dry, which struck me as odd. I was back on land, in a dense green wood, ominous in a way I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Poetical, somehow. The ground was rocky and inclined. This wasn’t North Dakota. What was it?

I heard a low growl. Not good. Low growls are almost never good. Even high growls aren’t great. I heard a low growl and saw an enormous black bear slowly approaching me, snout wet, eyes wild with malice or hunger or both. I looked about for somewhere to run. There was a clearing! I started in that direction, but – Alas!- coming through the clearing was a guy I went to high school with who I’d blocked on Facebook. REALLY didn’t want to talk to him.

But it was this guy or the bear. I was frozen in indecision.

Then, from above, an urgent whisper.

I looked up. There was a man in the branches of a large Sycamore Tree, partially obscured. He looked older. Well dressed. A stranger. Not ideal, but better than the other two options. I briefly hoped he wouldn’t be the chatty kind of stranger and then ascended the tree as quickly as I could.

There in the branches of the Sycamore was a man I immediately recognized. He was Kurt Vonnegut.

“You’re Kurt Vonnegut!” I whispered.

“Guilty as charged,” said he.

“But your d-d-d-dead!” I hissed.

“You and me both, kid.” He smiled kindly.

“Huh. I’m . . . dead? I guess that adds up. Why does your voice sound so weird?”

“Never mind that. Poo-tee-weet.”

We heard a roar and a scream, and both looked down to see my highschool acquaintance being devoured by the enormous bear.

“What in the hell is going on here?!” I asked, no longer whispering.

“You said it, son. You kicked the bucket. Passed on to your great reward. So it goes. You’re just outside of hell, bucko.”

“Adds up. What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to lead you through. Like a spirit guide, kind of thing. Lucky you.”

“It’s an honor. What are we waiting for?”

“The bloodthirsty bear.”

“Right, the bloodthirsty bear.”

Hours passed, and we sat in silence, watching the bear devour my classmate, whose political opinions justified this fate.

I had questions, but realized this was all most likely a product of my own imagination, the firing of the last few neurons in my brain, a quick dopamine dump before lights out, and didn’t want to look foolish in front of imaginary Kurt Vonnegut.

When the bear had finished its meal and shambled off, Kurt suggested we do the same.

We passed through a ragged gap in a stone wall. There was a sign above it which read, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

“Yikes,” I said. “Is this safe? Will we be able to get out of here?”

“Sure”, replied Kurt Vonnegut. “Just stick by me, kid, and we’ll be out of here faster than you can say Kilgore Trout.”

“I hope you’re right.”

Vonnegut tilted his head and gave me a wry smile.

“Aaaaah. You got me! All right, abandoning hope, starting . . . NOW!”

We passed though the entrance of Hell and into it’s first circle, Limbo.

“This is Limbo,” Vonnegut told me. “Unbaptized souls and all that. You don’t really believe in a literal heaven and hell, though, so it’s mostly just people you have no opinion about.”

“So this IS just a projection of my dying brain then? I was kind of hoping I was wrong.”

“It feels real, right?” Vonnegut asked. “So what’s the difference?”

He had a point.

Through the entrance, as my guide had said there would be, were thousands of people I felt nothing for, milling about, looking bored. I hardly recognized most of them, but a few looked vaguely familiar – half forgotten teachers staring into the middle distance, people I’d worked with pacing about, the entire cast of Leave It to Beaver, perpetually fighting off naps.

Soon we came to a river, kind of like the Red but more sulphureous and fiery, and with exponentially more damned souls waiting at it’s bank and shrieking in its bubbling waters.

“This is going to be a lot like Dante’s Inferno, huh?” I asked Vonnegut.

“It’s going to be whatever’s going on in the secret recesses of that idea machine in your skull. Probably your limited understanding of Inferno based on dozens of half readings with a bunch of random personal memories tossed in.”

“Cool, cool. Where’s the ferryman, I wonder?”

And there he was, suddenly, materializing in the sulfur mist, Sharon. Ch-aron? I’m not sure how to pronounce it.

The ghastly oarsman docked his boat, and bid us aboard.

“How do you pronounce your name?” I asked.

“Sharon, or Ch-aron. I’m not sure,” he said.

“Checks out,” I said to Vonnegut.

We hopped on the boat and headed for whatever I thought the second circle of hell would be like.

Turns out, we had to deal with Minos first, a hideous half man, half octopus, with the face of HP Lovecraft, who determines which circle of hell the damned will be relegated to.
“Let me handle this guy,” Vonnegut said. “He’s a real son-of-a-bitch.”

Minos’s greedy tentacles reached for me, but Vonnegut slapped them away.

“Not so fast, Jack,” he said. “We’re just going to scootch on by you, if you don’t mind.”

Chiron didn’t seem to mind. He shrugged what I assumed were his shoulders, wrapped a tentacle around Charlie Daniels, screamed, “Circle Three: Glutony!” and tossed the husky troubadour behind him like a spent can of Tiki Punch Shasta, fiddle and all.

Vonnegut and I kind of awkwardly edged past him, through the thin crack between his grotesque, slimy body and the stony outcrop at his side. He smelled like an old tin of sardines.

To get to the second circle of hell, we had to walk down a very steep flight of stairs with no hand rail. There was an elevator, but it was constantly nearly full of talkative strangers with poor personal boundaries. Horrific.

The second circle was for the lusty – sexed up men and women who couldn’t get enough of fucking and sucking, and were now condemned to be blown about by a terrible wind, symbolic of how in life they allowed themselves to be led by their penises and vaginas and buttholes and what not.

Still trying to catch our breaths from the long descent down the stairs, we were buffeted by the sexy gale, nearly swept off of our feet. Hugh Hefner blew past us, stupid robe flapping, his bony frame unable to keep him attached to the ground.

To combat the wind, to keep from blowing around in circles like that lecherous old wrinkled dick and the strong scent of cologne, talcum powder, and sex musk he left in his wake, Kurt Vonnegut hopped on my shoulders, and I piggy backed him through the wind-worn expanse, toward the next staircase.

On our way we encountered some of the most celebrated musicians and actors who ever lived:

Jim Morrison, still trying to write terrible poetry, even as the sheet of paper he was holding kept blowing out of his hand, only to be replaced by another piece which would invariably blow away before the pen in his right hand could reach it’s surface.

Noted rapist Errol Flynn, forced to perpetually sword fight the wind, which kept blowing the prop sword back at him, poking him in the eye.

Pope John XII was there, as were Janis Joplin, Lord Byron, and Wendy the Snapple Lady – a bit of a surprise – all struggling against the dastardly cyclone blasts in ways unique to their particular dirty deeds.

After what seemed like hours of struggle, we reached the staircase and Kurt Vonnegut alit from my back.

“Thanks for the lift, Hoss,” Vonnegut said. “You’d make one hell of a pack mule.”

“Thanks,” I said, “I have kids. You’re an excellent backpack.”

Down the stairs we went, toward Tier 3, for the gluttonous.

I assumed we’d meet Charlie Daniels there, and wasn’t wrong. He was being pelted by the icy rain, already beginning to melt into the blob of jelly that all residents of Tier Three must become. As such, I wasn’t able to identify any of the other denizens – it’s hard to put a name to a what looks like a pupa filled with lime jello – but I assume former President Howard Taff – namesake of taffy – was down there somewhere.

It’s hard to know what to do in an icy rain. Do you run or does that just cause the rain to hit you at a higher velocity? Do you walk, or does that result in being hit with more rain?

We chose to run, and it hurt like . . . well, hell. Cerberus the three headed hound waited for us at the other side. Thinking fast, I picked up one of the screaming blobs and hurled it at the vicious hellbeast, leaving my upper body looking like I’d just been a guest on Nickelodeon’s You Can’t Do That On Television.

It worked. While Cerberus tore into the damned soul, we hurdled past him and down the stairs, two at a time, like hyper active junior high school students.

“Way to use your old meat computer, kid,” Vonnegut said. “You’re really getting the hang of hell.”

Circle four is a massive hill surrounded by huge, perfectly round boulders. It’s inhabited by two categories of the greedy: Misers and spendthrifts, who begin their terrible chore at separate sides of the towering mound. Each cursed soul is assigned to a boulder and must push it up the hill, Sisyphus style. When they get to the top, they are inevitably met by someone from the opposite side and argue about whether it is better to spend one’s wealth extravagantly or to horde it. Obviously the spendthrifts are right, it’s not even a question. Anyway, the argument gets heated and somebody slaps a boulder and it goes careening back down the hill and then the other guy pushes the other boulder and then the whole thing starts over.

You can imagine who inhabits this place, I don’t need to tell you. A bunch of assholes on one side and some cool dudes on the other, mostly.

As we walked around the hill, Henry Ford told us we looked like a couple of Jews, and Vonnegut told him to go take a flying fuck at a donut. We high fived, and then looked kind of embarrassed about the high five and got on our way.

The fifth circle of hell is the most fun. It’s for the wrathful.

“You’re going to go just nuts for this circle,” Vonnegut told me. “As a figment of your imagination, I know you love celebrity feuds and spite – who doesn’t? – and this circle is chock full of those, but in a bubbling, boiling swamp of human waste.”

He was right, of course. There, sunk to their chins in what looked like a massive, hot sewage treatment tank, were every argumentative dingus I’d ever known or known of, all yelling at and grappling with each other. The din and odor were almost unbearable, but the sight was absolutely beautiful.

There was William F. Buckley, earlobes dipped in shit, screaming at a guy I’d blocked on Twitter last year. And Rush Limbaugh, new to the place, choking on the murk while being manhandled by my Great Grandmother.

It seemed to go on forever, each combative duo more satisfying than the last.

“My father is going to spend eternity here, I’m sure of it,” I said.

“So it goes,” replied Vonnegut.

“How are we going to get through this shit?” I asked Vonnegut.

“Probably some sort of boatman,” Vonnegut replied.

No sooner had he said this, than a hideous manbeast in a rowboat materialized from the hazy mire. He nodded at us and we hopped aboard.

Crossing the festering swamp, I saw ever more pleasing conflicts.

Richard Nixon with John Lennon in a full nelson.

Buddy Rich giving Huey Long the business.

As the boat neared the far shore, it began to shake. Someone was grabbing its edge, trying to pull us into the horrid muck.

We looked to the side and saw a feces splattered man with his hand on our craft.

“Jim Morrison! I thought you were in the second circle!”

“In life I was so shitty that they put me in two circles simultaneously!”

“Well, get off our boat, you wretched goofball, we’ve got more circles to see!”

I stomped on Morrison’s hand and he want flailing back into the gurgling waste, where he belonged. It felt good.

We arrived at the steps down to the sixth circle of hell, or so I thought. I’d forgotten that the circles of hell were divided into two categories: the first five circles for those who sinned through judgement and the next four for those who were actively malicious.

Dividing the two were the river Styx and the City of Dis.

Obviously I hadn’t totally forgotten it, or it wouldn’t be here. But I’d forgotten it in the moment.

“Listen. We’re just going to kind of skip over this whole business, if that suits you,” Vonnegut said. “There’s a lot of symbolism here that you really haven’t delved into and it’s just going to be a mess. This is already dragging a bit, don’t you think?”

“I do,” I said. “Let’s skip it.”

And so we did.

Upon further discussion, we just skipped the sixth, seventh, and eighth circles as well. Too bleak. Those guys that killed themselves and then become trees? Yeah, no thanks. Not getting into that.

And so we entered the frozen center of hell, steeled ourselves against its frigid winds.

All the expected no-goodnicks were frozen in it’s icy depths: Hitler, Stalin, Pol-Pot, Mussolini, Aleister Crowley, like two thirds of the Popes, GG Allin, and the entire bloodline that led up to the 45th president of the United States.

At the center was the Great Beast himself, the fallen angel, Satan, a massive three headed monster. In my hell, all of the faces looked like the worst president in history, the aforementioned Donald Trump, which is to say they looked like Jim Belushi wearing a Musollini mask made from ham fat after he’s been bobbing for apples in marmalade. Horrifying, but not unexpected.

Each head had a massive set of flapping wings, which were the source of the frigid wind.

In each of its mouths were cheeseburgers made from the bodies of slave owners and Puritans and former Presidents and slave owning former Presidents.

“Quick,” I said. “Let’s get out of here before he finishes his burgers and starts talking.”

“You got it, kid,” Vonnegut replied. “The bum news is we’ve got to go down his leg to get out. It’s going to be just awful.”

We did it anyway, and it was awful. I don’t want to talk about it. Halfway down, reality did a loop-de-loop and we were climbing up again, toward a light.

“Is that purgatory?” I asked.

“No, you haven’t read The Purgatorio. Pretty much no one has. That’s the end of the line for us. It’s been good knowin’ you, Messerschmidt.”

“Same to you, imaginary Kurt Vonnegut. Maybe I’ll slip in the shower one day and we’ll meet again.”

“Poo-tee-weet,” he said.

So I climbed into the light and out of hell.

Next thing I knew, I was was back on the muddy shore of the Red River, wet, cold, and shivering, but no worse for the wear, as they say. I grabbed the bag that said “The Phoenix Lights”. It was just a tent. But I needed a tent, so I took it, and headed home.

The end.

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Marie Osmond Scratched My Brother

Marie Osmond Scratched My Brother.
 
In 1991 Marie Osmond scratched my brother and one day I will scratch hers.
The principal actors in my story are as follows:
Marie Osmond: A member of world-renowned Mormon’s, The Osmond Family, though she was never an official member of the musical group.  You might know The Osmond Family from the discount bin on the floor at your local record store.  Marie had a middling singing career in her own right and eventually teamed up with her toothy brother Donny for the Donny and Marie variety show and that terrible little bit country, little bit rock and roll song. 
In addition to passable singing, she has been a perennial B to C List celebrity since the early 1970s, no easy feat, I suppose.
Chad Messerschmidt, my little brother: A member of the slightly less renowned current and former casual Lutherans, The Messerschmidt family of Fargo, North Dakota.  In 1991 Chad was five years old, a chubby little booger eater that very nearly ruined my life just by being born, or so I thought at the time.  Chad’s history is riddled with injuries.  Here is an incomplete list:
Broke his arm on his third birthday.  I fell on him.
Bitten by a donkey in sunglasses.  There is photographic proof of this.
Testicle went up inside of him.
Dislocated shoulder
Hit by car
Got glass in his leg when he kicked through a car window trying to get shotgun
Stabbed himself in the leg with a sword.
Cracked his head open while attempting to jump down a flight of stairs, resulting in brain bleeding
And, last but not least, scratched by Marie Osmond.
Marie Osmond was in Fargo in December of 1991 for an appearance on the Children’s Miracle Network’s annual televised fundraiser.  This was a big deal, kind of, as we didn’t get many celebrities in town.  Our “Walk of Fame” includes Steve Allen, Paul Harvey, and Bert & Ernie, none of whom ever lived here.
For this grand affair, local drivers were needed to man the limousines, and, because we’re not the type of town with much need for limousine drivers outside of prom season, volunteers were arranged.
My father, Rock, was one of these.  I don’t know why.  He was and is a local banker with an inept social climber’s interest in charity.
Anyway, we had the opportunity to meet Marie Osmond because my father was assigned to be her driver.
We met him at the hospital where I guess she was touring, and laughed when we saw him in his dumb limo driver hat.
And then, there she was, resplendent in terrible 90s fashion, hair huge and poofy, makeup thick and garish, shoulders elevated by pads: Marie Osmond, a lady I vaguely understood to be famous but had never heard of before.
What a thrill.
She smiled at us, told us how cute we were, even though we were both chubby, pasty mid-westerners in bowl cuts and well-worn starter jackets and probably struck her as sticky fingered small town rubes.
She reached out her hand to shake mine. Her nails were long, shiny, purple.  I remember it clearly.
I shook back without incident.
Then she took my brother’s hand and all hell broke loose.
 
Okay, hell is a strong word. He grimaced a little and she didn’t really notice.
Anyway, her ludicrous fingernails had scratched his flabby little arm.
Now, listen. I didn’t like my brother. Who in their right mind could have? But I loved him.
And, for that reason, on that day, my fate was sealed:
I would have to avenge this wrong.
I would, one day, have to find Marie Osmond’s botoxed brother Donny. And I would have to scratch him.
I imagine that, when it happens, it will go something like this:
Donny Osmond, confidently walking through the Denver International airport, chatting with his agent maybe, artificially plumped and smoothed skin a deep chestnut, repurposed hair (I’m guessing here) done up to the nines, veneers aglow. Maybe he’s got an assistant or something with him.  Maybe this is a layover on his way to cut the ribbon on some terrible resort he’s invested in in one of the Carolinas.
Regardless, he’s not paying attention to his surroundings.
I spot him from my terminal, over my book. My heart begins to beat quickly, my mind races, a sheen of sweat dampens my brow. 
This is it.  The moment I’ve been awaiting for nigh on 40 years now.
I put my book in my knapsack, stand, sling the bag over my shoulder, take a deep breath.
I begin walking toward him, casual, but quick.  As luck would have it, Donny Osmond is wearing a short sleeved shirt. Some expensive Hawaiian type thing.
I approach, stealthy but quick.
I’m right behind him now.
I reach out and tap him on the shoulder.
“Mr. Osmond?” I say.
He turns, a little annoyed.
“I don’t usually do this but . . .”
And then I make my move.
My pointer finger extended, the nail long and sharp as it has been for years, in preparation for this very moment.
As I reach, I shout, “Your sister scratched my brother, now I scratch you!”
He is confused, still holding his phone, keeping that bare, tanned arm exposed.
My fingernail reaches his skin and I pull down quickly, leaving a small red and white scratch on his perfect skin.
He pulls back.  Shouts, “Hey!”
I turn and run, elated.  I’m going to miss my plane, but my work is done.
Chad has been avenged and balance is restored.
20 seconds later I am tackled by airport security and spend a little time in the clink.
No big deal.
It was worth it.
The end.

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Sheldon

I lived in Post Landing for something like 6 years.  It’s a small, white painted wood and brick apartment building on the edge of downtown Fargo and I guess it used to serve some function of the Post Office, hence the name.  The individual apartments vary wildly in size, seemingly built at random like an eccentric widow’s dilapidated mansion, but mine wasn’t one of the big ones.  It was definitely among the smallest, but the one across the hall was even smaller.  I know because I trudged amongst the wreckage inside of it once.
We’ll get to that in a bit.
My home was a strange one. In the basement, underground, as I am nothing if not an underground person. It’s where I feel most comfortable. The apartment was longish but very narrow – essentially a wide hallway vaguely divided into rooms.  Not a utility, but close.  A living room with a tv about 2 feet from the couch, separated from the kitchen by an arched outcropping of the ceiling, then a door into the bedroom, and then the bathroom.  If you stood against the wall in the living room and walked straight for 30 feet you’d be in the bathroom, which was so small you could wash your hands while sitting on the toilet, which was kind of nice.
You weren’t supposed to smoke in Post Landing, but almost everybody did, and the Landlord was this big dopey guy that told me he wanted to be a writer within 5 minutes of meeting him.  He was pretty lax about the rent, but he was also pretty lax about repairs, which was irritating but understandable.
It was cozy there and I loved it, even though I was miserable most of the time, and it was conveniently located within walking distance of about a dozen bars, two liquor stores, and the library, which pretty much covered all of my needs in those days.
Two liquor stores was perfect, because if you’d already been to one that day, you could go to the worse one about a block down the road and not be judged for buying more booze at 2 PM when you’re already noticeably drunk, which I was about 60-70% of the time.
The residents of Post Landing were – and are, I suspect – your usual combination of hipsters, the mentally ill, mentally ill hipsters, and borderline homeless.  All the way homeless people surrounded the building – I’ll tell you their stories another day – as Post Landing is conveniently located between a homeless shelter, The Rape and Abuse Crisis Center, and Fargo’s only strip club – kind of a Bermuda Triangle of sadness and desperation.
I felt very at home.  These were my people, all of them.
I loved nothing more than to post up on the front stoop with a case of beer, a pack of smokes, and a pizza, and offer any combination of the three to whichever transient was passing by, so long as they would tell me their story.  This was very effective.
Anyway, I tell you all of this to set the scene, as more stories of Post Landing will follow.
But this story is about Sheldon.
I was absent from Post Landing for about a year and some change – maybe more, everything from this time is a bit hazy – basically living with a girl in her much nicer apartment, but continuing to pay the rent in mine, not fully committed.
We broke up and I trudged back to my old squat, possessions in hand, to see how the place was holding up.
It was holding up all right.  A little musty, but not much worse for the wear.
As I was loading in my stuff, a man ambled down the long narrow hall separating my apartment from the one across from it, coming from the laundry room.  He was short, squat, and hairy and he wasn’t wearing anything but Tobasco print pajama pants.  I immediately noticed there was a swastika tattooed on his doughy left breast, which was alarming, but his amble was amiable and my last name is Messerschmidt, so I’m usually given the benefit of the doubt by these people.
 
I was going to ignore – as is my wont – but he was clearly going to engage. He walked up to me, confidently, smiling – terrible teeth, but not without charm.
“You new here?” he asked.
“Actually,” I said, resigned to this interaction, “I’ve been here for a few years but was kind of living with a girl.  She broke up with me so I’m back.”
He tightened his lips within his ragged, brown goatee and nodded his head, understanding exactly what I was going through.
“Man,” he said, “I know how that goes.  I caught my girl getting her ass eaten out by our drug dealer.”
Now, I don’t know why he felt comfortable enough with me to utter these words within seconds of making my acquaintance.  Maybe there’s something about my general demeanor that says “cool with stories about drugs and assplay”.  I kind of hope not.  Maybe he’s just always that guileless.   Maybe he was just taking a shot and got lucky, because I’m totally cool with stories about drugs and assplay.
“Wow,” I said, thinking that this situation was nothing like mine but I sure didn’t want to get into that here in a the hallway with a Nazis and my arms full of a laundry basket holding most of my earthly possessions.
Then he said, “Hey, let me grab that for you, so you can get in your place.”
That was a nice thing to say, swastika or no swastika, I guess.
I handed him the basket and he said his name was Sheldon.  Said he was a bus driver.  Said he lived right across the hall and if I ever needed anything don’t be afraid to knock.
I said thank you and have a good one and went about getting my life back in order.
And then I didn’t see much of Sheldon, which was good.  He’d been nice enough to me, but a Nazis is a Nazis and I hate Nazis.
Every once in a while, though, I’d have an interaction with him which revealed more mysterious details about his life.  The first came about 8 months later.
There was a knock on my door.  This was never welcome, but I must have been feeling relatively stable and sober because I answered it.
It was Sheldon.  He was holding a mason jar filled with a clear liquid.
He said, “Hey man, thanks for watching my place while I was gone, here’s some moonshine.”
And then he handed me the moonshine and went into his apartment.
I had no idea what he was talking about – hadn’t known he was gone. Hadn’t really spoken to him since our first meeting, aside from a few hellos in the hallway.
I uncapped the moonshine and my eyes immediately began to water. It smelled like rubbing alcohol, rot, and fire.
I was a drunk, sure, but I’d stick to killing myself slowly with vodka, not all at once with this stuff.
I poured it down the drain.
The next time I talked to Sheldon, he was with a girl.  Again, there was a knock on my door.
I definitely wasn’t sober this time, but I’d heard his voice and I knew who it was and Sheldon wouldn’t or couldn’t judge me.
I opened the door and this girl was hanging on him, wearing transition lensed glasses that hadn’t quite transitioned from outside.  She was very high.
I said hello.
They told me some disjointed story about her mother who wanted them to store all of her diet pepsi in Sheldon’s apartment and that it was there – he opened his door to show it to me and the place was floor to ceiling cases of diet pepsi. They said she was crazy and that if she knocked on my door or window I should just ignore her.
I said I could do that.
Then the girl said, “You have such a unique voice.”
And I laughed uncomfortably and said thank you and they left. Never saw her again and I don’t know what became of all the diet pepsi.
The next and last encounter with Sheldon was another knock on my door, this time in the middle of the night.  He looked a little panicked and said he was leaving and if Jon asked – Jon was the landlord – where he was, I should tell him he’d joined the army.
I said, all right, take care of yourself.
And he opened his eyes really wide and sighed loudly and said, “It was great being your neighbor, have a good life.”
I closed the door and never saw him again.
Jon never asked me about Sheldon, but months later I unthinkingly checked his doorknob and the apartment was unlocked.
I couldn’t resist. I went in.  It smelled terrible, like mold and BO and old microwave dinners.  It was a mess.  Trash and clothes mingled all over the floor, but also seemingly all of Sheldon’s belongings. A mattress with no frame, a tv and playstation on a tv stand, a full ash tray, food and plates in the cupboards, a sparsely populated refrigerator, the usual shitty movie posters on the walls, a shelf of DVDs – pornos, mostly -and, unexpectedly, a hindu shrine to Ganesh, complete with a fake gold statue of the elephant headed god, some candles, and incense.  Next to it was a travel guide to India and a notebook.
I picked up the notebook and thumbed through its pages. Every one was blank. More mysteries. I pocketed it, the travel guide, and the statue, looked around a bit more, wondering what in the fuck had gone on in here, and then left.
I hoped I’d have a chance to give them back to Sheldon one day. To get some answers, maybe.  But, of course, I never did.

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Sam Patch

References and allusions include, but are not limited to: Icarus,  John Travolta, the Genesee River, George Washington, King Arthur, Jesus Christ, Niagara Falls, New England, base jumping, Western Migration, The Bible, Andrew Jackson, Elvis Presley, Gorgeous George, The Jolly Green Giant, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Carlos Williams, Bob Newhart, Craigslist, My Little Pony, Barry White, Betsy Ross, Netherlanders, Jedediah Smith, Puritans, opium, Giant North American Mason Bees, Freemasons, blueberries, and platypus buttholes.

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Eddie Vedder

References and allusions include, but are not limited to: Eddie Vedder,  cruel wizards, Ten, Fargo, AIWA stereo equipment, Candlebox, Dishwala, Better Than Ezra, The Refreshments, Eels, Bush, Goo Goo Dolls, “Heyfoxymophandlemama, That’s Me”, Pearl Jam, “Last Exit”, The Virgin Mary, Green Day, Tupac Shakur, Yield, “Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ’em” by MC Hammer, “Stay Sick!” by The Cramps, “The Earth, A Small Man, His Dog and a Chicken” by REO Speedwagon, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Boris Yeltsin, Home Alone, MTV, VH1, Soft Rock, John Mellencamp, Gloria Estefan, Sade, “Pump” by Aerosmith, Bryan Adams, Longfellow Elementary School, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana, “When She Cries” by Restless Heart, “Lightning Crashes” by Live, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Metallica, Guns ‘n Roses, The Melvins, Hit Parader, Circus, Scott Weiland, Don Dokken, Blackie Lawless, Rolling Stone, Spin, Grunge, Tad, Fig Dish, Vitalogy, Bono, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Sharpie, Saturday Night Live, Alanis Morrissette, Dr. Zhivago, Potato Days, Bob Dylan, Arthur Rimbaud, Kermit the Frog, Roy Orbison, Neil Young, Dead Boys, Split Enz, Van Halen, The Ramones, Otis Redding, The Byrds, The Beatles, The Who, Daniel Johnston, Arthur Alexander, Tom Petty, Lucinda Williams, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Brad, Hovercraft, Bob Marley, No Code, Mike Watt, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, “Ishmael” by Daniel Quinn, Ben Harper, Frank Black, The Pixies, Binaural, Belle and Sebastian, Riot Act, Fleetwood Mac, The Harlem Globetrotters, No Doubt, WWF Wrestling, The Shrine Circus, Weezer, Bright Eyes, Charles Bukowski, Russel Crow, the Chicago Cubs, The Wizard of Oz, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Jeff Ament, Matt Cameron, The Fargodome, and crossing the road like butterflies.

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Are You OK?

A new feature on The Irrationally Exuberant – Guaranteed 96% true short stories from the life of yours truly.  This first edition is a story about a time maybe ten years ago when I should have known I had a problem. This is the story of the time I found myself in front of the Fryin’ Pan at three in the morning, drunk, wearing a bloodstained suit and a backpack full of potatoes.  This is the story of the time a grizzled old hobo asked me if I was okay.