An email correspondent asks for a Crazy Helga update.  Since I last wrote, Crazy Helga has:  attacked an old man with a brick, assaulted the mailman, vandalized a car, thrown bottles at contractors, and attempted to convince a guy pouring concrete at my house that he could fix the gutters at hers.  You can watch Crazy Helga in what another correspondent calls "The Most Boring Video Game on the Planet."  Click here to do so now.

Nearly Dead Olaf shuffled by my painting project yesterday and inquired if I was the one responsible for turning on the lights in my house.  Yes, I replied, I was.  Olaf then asked how I made the lights go on and off.  With a light switch, I said.  Can such things be used in the bedroom, Olaf inquires.  Yes, indeed, they can.  With this Olaf wanders down the street while Helga stares at me angrily from her window. 

A friend who is helping me paint observes this interaction and looks at me with an inquiring look.  Homosexuals residing in houses with pink doors are rumored to also have light switches, I explain.  The destructive power of queer boys is unmatched.  Take that Al Qaeda! 

Other news from the Far North:  I am busy at work creating Sister Betty's first live show and book pimping event.  "Sister Betty - Live from the Vatican" should premier in San Francisco in October.  Cross your fingers and pull $20 from your wallet for advanced tickets.  If you want the best seats, join my email list.

15 August 2005 - (Link to this entry) (Comment)

I am halfway through a four stop, four-hotel business trip today when I wedge my tiny rental car into the remainder of a parking space left between two full size trucks with oversized tires, lift kits, chrome accessories and bumper stickers bearing slogans including "Trucking for Jesus".

I ponder: Does the creator of everything really needs a personal trucking firm?

See also:  The Flying Spaghetti Monster

22 August 2005 - (Link to this entry) (Comment)

My regular entry, normally posted on Monday, will appear this week on Tuesday. Here is random eye candy to entertain you in the interim. 

23 August 2005 - (Link to this entry) (Comment)

I made an appearance last week at an event where I was told I could not use the word "fuck".

Every language needs a really bad word and English has fuck.  Fuck is universal, too.  No matter where you are, no matter how foreign English may be, it seems everyone on the planet knows how to say "Fuck!"

I am a bit confused how fuck came to be such a bad word.  Given the amount of time most humans devote to either pursuing, having, fantasizing, or watching intercourse, it seems that fucking is central to being alive.  People might wince at the word "intercourse" (especially the Baptist crowd I grew up with), but they don't recoil in the same way they do with fuck, even though the words are essentially the same.

Fuck is such a versatile word.  Fuck can mean "Yes!  Wonderful!"  as in "Fucking ey!"  Fuck can me "damn", "shit", or just "oh my gosh".  "Fuck you" is brilliant as it is both an offer and a threat - depending on who says it and to whom.  Some people beg "Just fuck me!" while others gasp "Oh, fuck me harder!" 

During my Navy service, fuck was simply a word interspersed between every other word.  "Fuck she was fucking hot during our fuck and fuck I'd like to get a fucking transfer to that fucking duty station where a fuck isn't fucked."

Maybe fuck is obscene because so many people still need something to get upset about.  If I can find a reason to remain angry with you, I don't have look very deeply at why I hate myself.  My therapist would argue I am on to something here but I have to come back next week with another $100 to find out exactly what.

Several years ago, my business partner endured an especially difficult client.  Having listened to her harangue for several minutes, he said firmly "Fuck you" and hung up.  "That felt good," he said as he reclined in his chair.  I thought he might light a cigarette an exhale the smoke upward into the light above.

29 August 2005 - (Link to this entry) (Comment)

The smoking lounge in Washington Dulles airport is directly across the corridor from a Duty Free Shop.  The odors of stale cigarettes and heavy cologne combine to transport me back to a dark, wood paneled barbershop in my hometown. Lynn's Barbershop occupied a space between the Toy Chalet and the local beauty college.  The beauty college trained girls with heavy eye shadow who left school early and were never mentioned again except in whispered conversation. 

Lynn employed three barbers who used vinyl covered booster chairs for children too small to fit into the giant barber chairs.  Lynn worked in a secret backroom accessed by drawing aside strings of wooden beads hanging from the top of the doorway.  I thought the wooden beads were brilliant and strung together Tinker Toys on yarn to simulate the effect in my bedroom.

All the men of my family, my father, my brothers and I, went to Lynn's for our haircuts.  My father or my mother would deposit me with a barber and direct them to give me a Modified John-John. I didn't know what this was and neither did most of the barbers, so I ended up with a haircut that was at least ten years out of date and nothing like what other kids had.

My mother had her hair styled by a flamboyant gay Latino stylist in a salon.  I knew a salon was different from a barbershop because a salon had hairdryers and men who wore rings on more than one finger and called their customers "Hun".  I wanted to sit under a hair dryer but that seemed to be something reserved entirely for women.

There were few Latino people in my hometown and even fewer openly gay men - exactly one if you counted my mother's stylist.  My mother was as conservative as Christians can be, but when it comes to hairstyling, a good sinner is better than a bad saint any day.  Despite his over-the-top persona, my mother loyally followed him from salon to salon for decades.  My conservative Baptist mother fixed her hair in place each morning with liberal dose of Final Net and never uttered a judgmental word about the man who styled her locks.

After years of patronage, my parents had a disagreement with Lynn and we never returned to her shop.  Suddenly I found Beauty School students cutting my hair at beauty-school discount pricing.  These students often ran away trailing runny Tammy Faye eyes while my mother lectured on the fine points of the Modified John-John.  Eventually a cosmetology instructor would be summoned to undo the damage done by flailing students.  I still have no idea what a Modified John-John was, but I know for certain it was a very difficult haircut.

More...