The Dog Party

Brief Introduction
Or: What We Were Doing When The Dogs Came In

I had a book when I was a kid called Go, Dog, Go.
At the end of that book, a bunch of dogs have a “Dog Party”.

I actually got to see a kind of Dog Party, and this is basically that story.

My sister was doing a word jumble and I was about to watch something on television when our two German shepherds (Abby and Pepper) came in.

They looked at each other and then the older one, Abby, said, “We want to go for a walk.”

We didn’t know what to think! This was the first time we had heard her speak, but we decided to go along with them. 

(To clarify, we’d said “Speak” to them before, but this was to get them to bark. We had not asked them to speak when Abby asked to go for a walk.)

I took Abby’s leash because I was older, and my sister took Pepper’s leash, since she was the smaller dog. Pepper was not the brightest dog in the world, but she meant really well, and you could tell she really looked up to Abby.

We took them for a walk. I was afraid that we were going to miss an important show, like The Krypton Factor, the American version, which was hosted by Dick Clark, and which I had been dying to see, but the longer we walked, the harder it was for me to remember what show it was we were going to watch. My sister said, “You know how to speak English?” and Abby nodded.

“What other languages do you know?” she said, but Abby just gave her a weird look. I thought maybe Abby had learned English from listening to us or maybe television and wouldn’t have any idea that there were other languages. But then I thought of Godzilla movies. And I kept trying to remember what the show was.

“What show were we going to watch?” I asked my sister. She shrugged. I got the feeling that she didn’t really watch television for herself or to improve her understanding of the world, but rather to spend time with me. I thought maybe what I was doing seemed inherently cool to her, because I was older (in the same way Pepper looked up to Abby, maybe). I was still thinking of these things, when we came to the Ditch.

Congratulations Matthew Broderick!

On having the lead in the longest running production of Equus in history!

Boo, that joke.

Ha ha, Library of Congress, you just acquired THIS!

SUCKERS.

Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, etc.

Towering over them all is Nicholas Sparks and he is naked, typing, his small fingers lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to Gena Rowlands, huge and tan and hairless, like an enormous infant. He never sleeps, he says. He says he’ll never die. He types a movie for Miley Cyrus and laughs deep in his throat and he is a great favorite, Nicholas Sparks. He has typed sixteen books and his fingers are light and nimble. He never sleeps. He says that he will never die. He types in light and in shadow and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, Nicholas Sparks. He is typing, typing. He says that he will never die.

The Closet Origamist

I’m interested in the Wild West; I am something of a “buff”, and I’ve been wondering lately about the “Dead Man’s Hand”. As in: I know it’s aces and eights, but I couldn’t find anything about the kicker (n.b. the kicker is the fifth card), or if there even was a kicker (Hickok could even have discarded it; source: The Poker Encyclopedia; Allen, Hayes), and I know that ghosts are always bitter little clowns (Ghosts: if you are reading this, I would be happy to be proven wrong!), but I decide to pay the 40 bucks and do that service where ghosts take you back in time to see stuff and explain the context.

This is still a new service and there are kinks to work out, for sure. My experience with this has been that the ghosts won’t ever go back to their own moment of death; they just want to look at stuff that happened after they became omniscient, so I settle on the ghost of Davis Tutt Jr, whom Hickok killed in 1865. I calculate this should give me about 10 years of context.

He comes the next night at 1am (ghosts always show up at midnight in the time zone they died in). He says, “Scroooooge just kidding it’s Davis.”

I tell him what I’m interested in and he says, “What are you, a ‘buff’? OK, let’s go,” and then he takes my hand, which is the only part of the ghost you can touch, and we are flying through the air. The wind blows through his gunshot hole and plays the tune “Kingdom Coming” by Henry Clay Work (which was a popular song in the Old West (source: Popular Songs of the Old West; Gibbs, White); to which he sings along :

Say, darkies, hab you seen de massa, wid de muffstash on him face

It makes me uncomfortable!

But the way in which I am made to feel uncomfortable by this masks the barfing that is typically concomitant with time travel by ghost handshake and the next thing I know it’s 1866 in Springfield, Missouri and so points for Tutt there. “This is where the railroad came through,” he says, “I just missed it by a few years.”

I tell him he didn’t miss it, actually, due to he was a ghost and therefore omniscient, but he tells me there’s a very confusing period after you die where there’s a lot of vengeance and you miss a lot.

“Sorry, I’m not King Ghost, PhD or whatever,” is what I should say but instead I say, “OK, What I am interested in is the Dead Man’s Hand.”

Tutt shrugs, which is weird when ghosts do it because they can actually shrug their shoulders through their ears: “Look over there, then,” he says, and we’re in a back room where Hickok and Sempronius Boyd, who was the judge for Hickok’s trial (source: Encyclopedia of American Government, 1850-1899; Herringsworth), are playing cards. Boyd has tens over nines and calls; Hickok does some weird legerdemain and reveals four Jacks. Boyd frowns and then leaves and later gives the jury mutually exclusive instructions in Hickok’s conviction, which leads to his acquittal. “As far as I’m concerned, that’s the Dead Man’s Hand,” Tutt says. Like a big pronouncement, like he’s earned the 40 bucks. Then he says: “If the jury had gone the other way, we might all have been spared ‘The Daring Buffalo Chases of the Plains’.” Like a joke, but if this is meant to be a joke, I don’t know what the joke is. We jump.

Now it’s 1869, and Hickok is playing cards with Bill Mulvey, which I didn’t know he had done that (he will shoot Mulvey in another week or so; source: Calamity Bill, Rosa). Mulvey lays down a ten high straight, and starts to collect the pot, but then Hickok does another hand gesture and shows that he has a flush. I don’t get to see what it is a flush of before we jump again.

Now we’re in a hotel room and Hickok is folding playing cards into little angular birds. Tutt elbows me, which I don’t notice at first because ghosts? Bad at elbowing. “One for every person he told George Ward Nichols he killed,” Tutt says, putting his shoulders through his ears. We jump to when Hickok shoots Mulvey by bluffing him into thinking there are more people there then there actually are: “Don’t shoot him, boys!” Hickok yells. Mulvey hesitates and Hickok guns him down, startling some meadowlarks upward. I remember the collective noun for birds is a “flush” and we jump to Abilene to see Phil Coe unfolding a bunch of the folded up cards (and being a grouch about it) so he and Hickock can play a game. “I don’t know why this is my job,” he says.

He (Coe) holds up a bird he is about to untessellate and says he once killed one just like it. Hickok says, “Did it have a pistol? Was it shooting back? I will be.” Pretty much unprompted! Coe will soon be Hickok’s last gunfight victim, I know from books, although “gunfight” is stretching it in this case. When they play, Hickok’s hand beats Coe’s two pair. It is either three of a kind or four of a kind. It can’t be five of a kind, obviously, but at one point it does look like that; we jump a few more years ahead.

Hickok has pretty bad trachoma and his lashes fold inward like a flytrap as he writes a note to his wife Agnes whom he abandoned not long before. He signs off:


With wishes even for my enemies, I will make the plunge and try to swim to the other shore.


He folds the hotel stationery into a little envelope with a “pull here” tab. Tutt and I hold hands; we jump.

And here at last we are on August 12, 1876, in the Dakota Territory, specifically in the Black Hills, specifically in Dead Wood, specifically in Nuttal & Mann’s Saloon. Hickok sits with his back to the door. I peer over to see his hand: an ace of clubs, an eight of spades, a four of hearts, a Jack and three of diamonds. So, basically, nothing? I don’t get it. Hickok will soon be shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall. I tell Tutt, “I don’t get it.” Tutt waits until McCall comes in, then we zip back to present day. Tutt’s bullet hole whistles and Tutt sings:

It mus’ be now de kingdom coming, an’ de year ob Jubilo

And we’re back in my room.

I would like it said that Tutt was courteous to me, and that is why I ranked him A+ and I know people are cheesed off at me for not ranking him lower, because that was the last A+ he needed to move on to the Afterlife. What I am saying is I am sorry for other “buffs” who may have had questions specifically for him (I hope you all “have wishes even for [your] enemies”! Source: above letter), and I will try to answer anything I can if you email me. I’ve gotten a few emails about parting words, and Tutt’s parting words were answering my question about my not “getting it” about the Dead Man’s Hand.

“What’s not to get?” Tutt said, “He’s famous. But who will remember Sempronius Boyd? Who will remember Coe? Or me?” which I would say is empirically ridiculous, given I just spent 40 bucks on him, but maybe he meant, “Who, other than the ‘buffs’?” And then he said his last thing before his body spread out through the room and then turned into basically the air in the room; he said: “That’s how it is with guys like him: even when he folds, he wins.”

The Brooklyn Lady Bloggers

To be clear, in the sex dream he had about the Brooklyn lady bloggers, he only had sex with one Brooklyn lady blogger, and it was in an implausible sex position, and yet the sex had been good enough that she subsequently chose to not blog about it.

But aside from that one (and it is not the one you are thinking of, probably) there were all the other Brooklyn lady bloggers in the dream, including some that were just made up for the dream, and were just representative of as-yet unknown Brooklyn lady bloggers. There was that one from Fort Green, and that one from Carroll Gardens, and that other one from Carroll Gardens and that one from South Slope, and then some unspecified Brooklyn lady Bloggers.

After the sex part, the dream shifted to a general appreciation of all of the Brooklyn lady bloggers, and the “plot” of the dream was that he was in the initial stages of dating one of the as-yet unknown Brooklyn lady bloggers, but this dating involved hanging out with all of them, as they traveled in a group. They were not individually solipsistic but if considered as a collective noun, then they were (in the dream).

In the dream about the Brooklyn lady bloggers he got off a few good bons mot. One was about how he was trying to sit next to the Brooklyn lady blogger that he was just starting to date, but this necessitated moving the other Brooklyn lady bloggers around to other chairs. But the Brooklyn lady bloggers were subdivided into groups of BFFs, so he had to shift these concave polygonal groups of Brooklyn lady bloggers around in a way that was partly like a sliding tile puzzle and partly like getting a couch into a small apartment. At the resolution of the problem, when he at last sat by the Brooklyn lady blogger that he was in the initial stages of dating, he said something funny about chess that all of the Brooklyn lady bloggers thought was quite good, although he does not play chess in real life.

Later, he and the Brooklyn lady blogger he was dating, and the other Brooklyn lady bloggers, including the one that he had had the good sex with in the beginning were all at an AIDS benefit. That was a weird part! What was that about? Shortly after, he was in the lobby of his office building, trying to convince his manager to get the law firm where he works to give a corporate donation to the AIDS charity, so at least you could say there was a call-back to that weird part of the dream. The Brooklyn lady blogger he was dating hung back by the revolving doors while he discussed this with his manager. In retrospect, this was the only time the Brooklyn lady blogger he was dating was separated from the other Brooklyn lady bloggers. Maybe it was because his subconscious was making him choose between doing actual work when he was in the office and surfing the internet all day. Oh man, nobody likes a preachy dream! Let’s get back to the sex part!

But just kidding, because the vast bulk of the dream took place after the sex part, and the Brooklyn lady blogger with whom he had had the sex was a minor character for most of the dream, and honestly the truly pleasurable part of the dream was the part where he was in the initial stages of dating the lesser-known Brooklyn lady blogger, and it was that feeling when you meet someone new and it seems like: OK everything can just stop changing now and we’ll just stay like this because nothing about this person is annoying me yet.

But the introduction of a real person from his life (the manager) seeded the clouds of reality and he started to remember pieces of his actual life that formed a mosaic and the mosaic said that he could not actually date the lesser-known Brooklyn lady blogger, since in real life he had been married for some time, and had an eleven year old daughter, whom he loved, God he loved her, but who at age eleven was probably perilously close to becoming a blogger herself, though not in Brooklyn (they live in Norwalk). How would he even know for sure? He uses the internet but he is not good at it.

At this point he woke up, and despite the sort of abrupt ending, it was some time before the overall pleasant feeling wore off and during the next few weeks he could recall most of the details of the dream. The sex part of the dream seemed increasingly preposterous with the progression of time, but made sense in a way because it had been with the Brooklyn lady blogger of whom he had been the longest aware. It was like a Farewell Sex Act immediately prior to the onset of the new relationship with the lesser-known Brooklyn lady blogger, and the fact that it had not been blogged about made all the other Brooklyn lady bloggers think, “That must have been some good sex!” and this open secret inside the collective gave him some confidence with which he was able to pursue the lesser known Brooklyn lady blogger, and to state it again, there are some feelings that maybe can be summed up as “confidence” although that would seem to be selling the feeling short, feelings which his brain has tenuously correlated to post-thunderstorm sunlight, bourbon, certain bacons, the album “Star” by Belly, the smell of the inside of the cabinetry in the kitchen of the house he lived in during the mid-80s and the “good” caramels his mother kept there, which he was not supposed to eat, some feelings related to just getting to know someone that still seems amazing and brand new to you like an unscratched scratch-off card, that is like the light violet color of rubbing alcohol on fire, the way it burns but does not hurt you: that feeling stayed with him for several weeks afterward.

I'm just posting this here to remind myself that when I am older it is my intention to try to be at least 10% this wicked

Look I took something that I once thought was sweet and funny and beautiful and made it crappy because irony

I privately say to you, old friend, please accept from me this unpretentious bouquet of very early-blooming sad faces:

:(:(:(:( ):):):):

Good Reads

ARRRRRGH

This is AGONY. The thing's been over for like hours. Just put something up there. ANYTHING to make me stop thinking what I'm thinking.

HERE IS MORE OLD STUFF

I'm not even bothering to look for old stuff on my hard drive to post here anymore; I'm just going to look for old stuff I already posted here to post here. I guess!

I remember when I finished this, I was like, It is depressing to work hard on something that is stupid.

If you want to hire me for a commencement speech or something, please be aware, that's about the only insight I have about stuff.

But anyway: Happy Belated Robert Burns' Birthday or whatever.


Ha! whare ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie!

Sestet

I did not know what “Lots of Sand” meant,
did not know this thing until
I watched the movie Ten Commandments,
filmed by Cecil B. DeMille
(Charleton Heston’s eyes were lambent;
Brynner’s voice, a fire drill).







(still finding stuff on my hard drive from ten years ago that I only have the vaguest recollection of doing)

Happy Holidaze (sic)

I was looking for something on my computer and I found this thing that I only sort of remember doing (in MS-Paint!) in a computer lab in 1996, likely instead of working on an essay about hegemony and/or transgression (these were the only things I learned to write about in grad school) (I was not very good at grad school!).

The Save Date on it is 12/8/1996 so it is a Christmas present from my 13-years-ago self to my current self (Merry Christmas! Also, Memento Mori!), but I'll show you too because I am generous.

Ha ha, nice one, younger self. You don't even notice that it looks like it takes place on Bespin until you look at it for over a minute.
Thanks. There is a giant bottom margin on this thing due to I did it in MS-Paint in 1996.
No worries, thanks again. I didn't get you anything, but here is a link to something that will someday be your favorite non-Jessi thing on BabelPop. It is also Christmasy.
Thanks.

(They make out)
(Fade Out)

(Fade In, several hours later)


(Simultaneously) "You are an excellent lover."

um ok, enough of that.
Have a good holiday if I don't see you, which I won't because I am a blog post.

BoobieWatch!

Um this was a sonnet I wrote in the comments of a post on The Awl wherein Alex Balk wrote a poem summarizing Lynn Hirschberg's profile on Megan Fox. [?]

I know no one cares about inside-jokey sonnets I write in the comments on other blogs (this is not Recursive Fimoculous! I think Rex Sorgatz used to include his comments on other blogs on his site, but I just looked and he either doesn't now or never did; anyway) or even on this blog, but it's the only thing I've "written" all week, so I'm putting it here mainly because sometimes I forget the last time I typed "boobies" and the answer is this. It was this time. I am sorry you have to read this.

And in fact you should use this whole "post" as a means to just click over to the actual post, because it is great and there are more great things in the comments. I love the Awl comments, maybe even more than Videogum comments; I want Karen UhOh to follow me around saying things.
WE COULD SOLVE MYSTERIES!

So, OK:

That cherry made my brain scream “Sherilyn Fenn!”
When I saw it in GQ magazine.
I never will forget her; then again,
I had to google “Brian Austin Green”.

I guess that Hirschberg’s point is Things Transmute..?
Both crushes and the crushees take a bow.
The kneepad leggings gone that were so cute.
The Jolies meet the Jolier Than Thou.

Red Lobster Biscuits yield to Truffled Fries
And a propensity for bad tattoos
(“We L.O.L. at gilded butterflies”)
Give way to smarts, re: “boobies on read-thrus”

So in this way one changes tit for tat:
There ought to be a German word for that.

Orienting Arrow

A longass time ago, my friend Siobhan wrote a book that was funny and informative. I drew some pictures for it, and I think we all learned a little something in the process (about how I am bad at leveraging opportunities to do things I actually like instead of working for the same company for twelve years or whatever it is now just kidding please keep employing me I need the healthcare: anyway, that is what we all learned).

It was called "30 Things Everyone Should Know How to do Before Turning 30", although you may know it by its German title (interesting sidenote: although they kept the "30" in the title of the German edition, the "How to eat a lot of cabbage before invading Poland in a well-made car" chapter was you know what it's not even worth finishing that line let's just go to the next paragraph. GERMANS, RIGHT?).

AND BUT SO
In addition to looking at archived emailed from the early aughts to remind myself that I'm not as clever/funny/smart as I used to be, I sometimes search for this book, and here is what I saw today: this book, which is $1.54 for a used copy is currently going for between $93.55 and $184.13 for a new copy.



NOW THEN
Later on, my friend Siobhan wrote another book called Hipster Haiku. This book featured zero illustrations by me (whoever's decision that was, I bear you no rancor, I pretty much maxed out my ability to draw hands with the first book).

BUT
Let's see how this book is doing OH INTERESTING IT IS AVAILABLE NEW FOR $4.22.
Look, this is a funny book. This book is funnier than it should be. I think if you were to read it what would happen is you would likely marvel at the funniness therein. But $4.22? I think we see what's going on here.

HENCE
For a limited time, I will draw a picture on any book you want for the jaw droppingly low price of like I don't know a dollar or something (higher if I have to draw hands).
I can basically guarantee (definition 4: "v. to guarantee sarcastically") that the book will increase in value TENFOLD within six years. I am contactable at pmortensen at g ma i l dot com (ha I just tricked some spambots SUCK IT SPAMBOTS I AM ONE STEP AHEAD OF YOU LIKE BOBBY FISCHER ONLY A NONANTISEMITIC VERSION, although I do plan to die of renal failure in Reykjavik, like him, so. OK call it even).

This is a limited time offer. Once I am a millionaire I will probably stop to focus on damaging my kidneys and/or working on my parody of that Beyonce song tentatively titled "Shingle Ladies (Put Some Acyclovir On It)". That joke should probably have gone on Twitter and not here; I think that's how Twitter works. SO CONFUSING. Anyway, go ahead and send me money. THANKS

This didn't say what I thought it said

This guy made me laugh

This guy made me laugh
Originally uploaded by mrbikferd

What IS causing it? About three seconds more of pondering should crack this nut.

I'm at the Greek diner

The one on the corner and Willie Nelson walks in and I'm totally freaking out. IT IS REALLY WILLIE NELSON. He orders a gyro and the guy makes it and Willie Nelson takes a bite -- I'm like twittering this the whole time: WILLIE NELSON JUST CAME INTO THE RESTAURANT I WAS EATING IN #willienelson -- even though I'm getting gyro grease on my phone it is worth it, so crazy WE ARE BOTH EATING GYROS! and Willie Nelson turns to the proprietor and says, "Say, what's in this, anyway?" He is pretty short, actually. So he has to like climb up on a stool to be seen? And the guy behind the counter says, "Lamb, mostly?" and then Willie Nelson turns to his entourage which is weird but I don't know what else you would call them, these outlaw looking guys that he came in with, but he turns to them but really you know he is addressing everyone in the diner and it gets totally quiet and Willie Nelson says, "Well..." and then he just lets it hang there like a PERMANENT ELLIPSIS and I am swearing to God right now if he doesn't follow this up with, "My gyros have always been cow, boys," I WILL TOTALLY LOSE MY SHIT Actually I will totally lose it anyway, but OK he's about to speak. This is too long for Twitter so I'm putting it here this is it you guys he's about to talk you guys this is it

When I Squeeze My Mind Grapes, the Resulting Wine Metaphor Trends Toward the Upper Echelons of the Middle Brow

On the bike path today I was behind a guy with extremely localized butt sweat such that if he had been wearing Winkers, it would have been like in Henry and June when Maria de Medeiros taps Fred Ward on the shoulder during Un Chien Andalou (or maybe Heddy Lamar in Ecstasy Featuring Heddy Lamar I can't remember) and anyway Fred Ward turns around and his face is blanked out by tears.

OPEN LETTER TO WINKERS CREATORS: PLEASE MAKE FRED WARD BIKING SHORTS

this is just in case you forgot

what it felt like