Category Archives: Humor

NAKED IN HOOSIERLAND

Posted on by
15

by Kent Ballard

You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but our esteemed blogger Zach is actually a pretty bright fellow. Recently he gave me an idea that’s worth pondering and perhaps implementing. I was complaining about all the tourists who come to my county for two weeks out of the year to see the brilliant fall foliage and to attend the county-wide festivals each little burg has during this time. If you are a local, if you actually live where people visit, you soon learn that all tourists are major pains in the ass and most consist of folks whom even Wal-Mart wouldn’t allow in their doors.

I was complaining about this at some length with Zach and he more or less said, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”

I do not have a machine which makes cotton candy. I don’t sell deep fried watermelon on a stick. I don’t have suppliers who sell me eight hundred pounds of cheap, worthless socks made by slave labor in Somolia or genuine Americana “antiques” which were made last summer in China. These are pretty much what all the booths and yard sales in our festival sell and I want no part of it.

Zach said to simply charge the rubes a few bucks to swim in my pond. I have 71 acres of forest in which I live and two ponds, one rather large. I dismissed his idea originally, but thought about it later…

The last time I checked, the state of Indiana had more nudist colonies per capita than any other state in the union. Nobody seems to know why, but we do. Why just charge people to swim? Why not put up a couple of dozen cheap cabins, throw up an eight foot wooden fence around my acreage, hire some security, and start my own nudist camp?

The initial cost of starting up such a colony would be pretty high, but have you ever checked what they charge families for two weeks to a month to relax in the nude at a skin camp? It’s appalling. A king’s ransom. But people line up to cheerfully pay every year. Established nudist resorts rake in more money than Vegas. Money interests me.

Let’s see…I already have the land. My home is so remote there is a plaque along my half-mile long driveway commemorating this as the place where dark was invented. It’s nothing but deep valleys, high ridges, ravines, and I think if you could flatten it all out it would equal Vermont in size. It’s mostly hardwood forest and, I think, rather pretty country. We have deer, many of them. We have huge barred owls that call to each other at night. We have coyotes who form choirs to serenade folks in the wee hours, driving every pet dog into howling fits for miles around. Off and on, we have bigfoot though I might want to leave that off the advertisements.

I’d need a tall wooden fence around the entire property, and probably a very wicked inner fence of razor wire to keep out the curious riff-raff. And I would need a few roving perimeter guards. I would hire the bigfoot, as they would be champs at this, but they’re not trustworthy when it comes to punching a time clock. So, instead, I would hire rural women to be the guards at my colony. I know many country women who could score “expert sniper” on any military gun range and most of them are quite attractive.

They also take no crap from anybody. Yes, rural women would be perfect perimeter guards.

I could buy a score or two of those prefabricated tiny houses or largish yard tool barns and convert them into rustic cabins lit by kerosene lamps. A few porta-potties scattered about would take care of those needs, and I could put small wash basins in the cabins. I’d have to build a shower house, but there would be no need to build a laundry. Those who wished to could bring their own camping gear and enjoy all this beautiful scenery and nakedness outdoors if they chose to.

We’d have nightly cookouts, card games, bingo, swimming contests, all the usual campground activities. I’d buy a few yards of cheap ribbon and hammer out some large medals for the Ms. & Mr. Nudist Camp contestants every month. It’d cost a ton to get everything set up, time before word got around to the nudists themselves (which means advertising), but once that was done and the colony established, I would be filthy, stinking rich.

I’d drive a custom-made Jeep. I’d hire people to cut my winter’s firewood. Hell, I could afford a new tractor! (Don’t scoff. The big ones run close to a quarter-million dollars. Google them if you think I’m kidding.) Best of all, I could make lots of nice, new, naked friends.

In rural Indiana the most savage enemies I would have would be the fine church-going people. They would protest. They would organize. They’d picket my front gate. I’m nowhere near a school or other public facility and I suppose a lengthy court battle might beat them, but I have friends in low places and it would be both cheaper and faster to identify the church ringleaders and grease a few of their palms. Failing that, a little detective work to get photos of everybody who’s screwing everybody else in their congregations would calm them down pronto.

So I’m now doing cost-study analyses and pricing lumber. Also checking on the cost of Viagra by the case. If I went full-tilt boogie and invested everything I have (and what I could borrow), I could pull this off. The critical point would happen when I bring this plan up with my lovely wife. Foolishly, I taught her how to shoot years ago and she’s quite good at it. As a rule she’s kind-hearted and gentle, but I cannot outrun a hail of 9 millimeter bullets so this would take great planning and preparation. She’s interested in money too, and that would help.

So…someday when you are perusing your favorite porn site, should you find an advertisement for Indiana’s newest nudist colony, contact me at the provided web address and I’ll send you brochures, maps, rates, and everything you need to know. Then plan your summer vacation here. And pack very lightly.

I may even treat you to shameful, horrible stories about Zach while grilling hamburgers, some of which would even be true. But for so kindly giving me the idea of how to become a rustic, backwoods Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt, I’ll alter the names and dates which should give him a chance at explaining all this to his beloved Sue. If that doesn’t work I’ll send her a season pass.

You will have the vacation of a lifetime. You’ll broaden your horizons and eventually relax and embrace a tolerance of alterative lifestyles. Besides, it simply feels good to run around naked. Life is too short for Puritan prudishness. Try it and you will be surprised at how quickly you take to this refreshing and wholesome (by Indiana standards) lifestyle. You’ll get a killer tan too.

But we ask you. Please….no peeing in the pond.

You can’t get a suit of armor and a rubber chicken just like that. You have to plan ahead. Michael Palin

 

A Cell-Free Life by Kent Ballard

Posted on by
23

Well, Mr. Mailer is still playing hard to get. You’d think a person in a grave couldn’t really hide, though they sure can remain silent. But I’ll lure him out with threats of interviewing Vidal first. So while I keep banging on his ego, Kent Ballard has kindly agreed to join my pinch-hitters. …Zach

 

Some of my friends call me a Luddite. Some claim I’m a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal. Some just think I’m…well…peculiar.

I do not own a cell phone. I never owned one and if I have my way, never will. Many people are genuinely staggered by this. And the younger they are, the more astounding they find it. The majority of the world’s population, even in the poorest countries, now own cell phones. They have access to the Internet, instant worldwide news, the weather on any part of the globe, can communicate with the guy across the street or in Timbuktu, can film asteroids crashing into the earth, check their stocks, send and receive nude photos of each other, and generally have a nifty little piece of genuine Star Trek equipment they lug around with them everywhere.

I’ve had people tell me they would rather leave their homes without clothing than without their cell phone.

And in this one, lone, and remarkable instance, I am right and everyone else is wrong, so far as I’m concerned.

The modern American cellular phone is generally agreed to be Ameritech’s 1G DynaTAch, which took a decade to reach the market and cost one hundred million dollars to develop. It became available in 1983. It was heavy, awkward, took ten hours to charge, and had a talk time of about thirty minutes. They sold them faster than they could produce them. Waiting lists numbered into the thousands.

The cell phone is only about thirty years old, if you skip over bulky car phones, that ridiculous-looking brick with a three foot antenna and a weight approaching two and a half pounds. And you know what? We had a pretty dandy civilization before they came along. Yes, you may find it hard to believe, but before we had cell phones we had lasers, had been to the Moon, were flying operational missions with the Space Shuttle, had discovered the DNA double-helix, and even had electric lights.

One writer about my age (60) said that “we are the last generation on earth who will know what it’s like to be totally alone.” But I don’t see that as a necessarily bad thing. Sometimes I want to be alone and not looking at some YouTube film of a two-headed goat my neighbor sent me or texted nineteen boring cat jokes from Aunt Matilda. True, cell phone films taken by citizens of police abuse have proven valuable court evidence, but sworn testimony by eyewitnesses is still taken as gospel in the courts too. How do you think they handled these matters in, say, 1978?

Another thing I do not want is the NSA, FBI, or some podunk county sheriff “pinging” me to know my location at all times, day or night. I don’t want them to time me between cell towers and gauge the speed I am driving. I usually have a good idea of my location, and it’s none of their damned business. I don’t have enough room in my car to haul around forty government agencies, nor do I want them riding with me.

They say there’s no such thing as privacy now, and that’s often true. If they’re going to put me on a list of potential skateboard hijackers, they’ve already done it thanks to the shredding of the Fourth Amendment to the Bill of Rights and the PRISM program that reads all my email. And yours. But if I want to jump in my car and drive to Winslow, Arizona and wait for a girl in a flat-bed Ford to look at me, there’s no way in hell they’ll know where I am or what I’m doing and I like it like that.

But when wide-eyed people ask me, “What if you need to make an emergency call?” I tell them the truth. I can’t, and pay phones have all but disappeared. But if I’m on the road anywhere, I can reach for my CB radio, call out to just about any trucker, and they’ll place the call for me. I’ve done that before. It works very well, bless the truckers. CB radios, I predict, will make something of a comeback after the news releases about PRISM. The technology is so old they’ve simply overlooked it. And if you know how to do it, you can power them up to reach out hundreds of miles if you wish.

During the Boston Marathon Bombing, in one second the millions of viewers on the scene could have called anyone on the planet. The next, and their 4G iPhones were utterly useless. Sheer dead weight. Whether the cell towers were overloaded or if they simply shut them down isn’t the issue. People who had sure and certain communications with the world lost them, and for many that equaled panic.

But the race’s official communications were all handled by Ham radio operators. They never failed, not one. They set their frequencies to call in police, ambulances, emergency services while at the same time helping runners locate loved ones and maintaining an information flow with the outside world. Cell phones just slowly drained their batteries, silent. Think about that for a moment, and you will realize authorities in any area can simply shut down the cell towers whenever they think they have a reason, leaving you literally speechless, unable to contact a soul. You may wish to develop your own backup plan if the government tinkers much more with our communications in the near future.

Like all technology, cell phones have their good sides and bad sides. For me, the bad outweighs the good. They make very large crowds of people easier to silence, and that ain’t a good thing.

Yes, I’m among the last generation to know what it’s like to be truly alone—when I want to be. I can walk back through my woods, sit down by the little creek, and the only sound I will hear is the babbling of the water and song birds. After a bad day, that is peace few people can find. And I will have no beeping, ringing, squalling, or moon-dancing racket interrupt my solitude and gathering calmness. No nameless “officer” will be able to locate me. No hordes of ad agencies will know my habits and send me eighteen pounds of junk mail for outdoor goods. That’s known as targeted advertising.

And I don’t care to be a target.

Spider Season by Sherri Frank Mazzotta

Posted on by
6

Spider season is coming. Spring, summer, fall:  Every time the weather changes, those 8-legged predators appear. Clinging to the kitchen ceiling. Scuttling over counters. Rappelling down walls in the shower like….well, like Spiderman. I’m not one of those shrieking, jump-on-a-chair girly-girls. I don’t mind cockroaches and I love mice. But spiders scare the bejesus out of me.

We have a variety of breeds in our house. True, these are not the spiders of my Jersey youth; those baseball-sized “beauties” that lurked in our toothbrush drawer and under garbage bags in the garage. But they’re just as evil.  With their segmented bodies. Multiple eyes. Spindly legs stretched like claws. Waiting-sometimes hours at a time, I’m sure-to catch me alone.

Spiders are intimidating, and they know it. They have motive. They mean harm.

I get up before my husband each day, when it’s still dark. Nervously, I turn on the kitchen light but don’t step into the room until I’ve scanned the ceiling.

“If you hear me scream, it’s always a spider,” I tell him. “So come quickly.”

I don’t care that they eat flies and ants and other insects-I want them out of the house. I want them dead. Though I sign the execution orders, my husband is usually the one who kills them. He uses a wet paper towel to squash them with his bare hands. If they’re too high to reach, he grabs a mop and crushes them into the plaster. That’s what I call an action hero.

At one point he bought an expensive bug vacuum that was marketed as a “keep your distance” way to capture pests. It touted a telescoping nozzle and a 22,400-rpm motor that sucked insects into a tube and stunned them on an electric grid. According to the catalog copy, the stunned bugs could then be dumped outdoors. “Screw that,” I said. No spiders would be set free as long as I manned the vacuum.

It worked beautifully the first time we used it. Steve positioned the nozzle over a quarter-sized beast and turned on the power. The spider whooshed backwards into the plastic tube and we heard a sizzle. I smiled.

A few days later and alone-once again-in the early morning hours, I was confronted by those creepy legs. Confidently, I grabbed the vacuum  I placed the nozzle over the spider and hit the switch, but nothing happened. There was a sucking sound but no sucking. The spider began to move, so I pressed harder on the tube. I turned the vacuum off then on again, but the spider still clung to the wall. It was a terrifying moment of face-to-fangs intimacy, but I was losing confidence and the spider knew it. Finally, I dropped the vacuum and backed out of the room. I woke up my husband.

The “Keep Your Distance” vacuum hasn’t been used since.

Arachnophobia is one of the most common fears in the world. According to the website, Celebrities with Diseases (http://www.celebrities-with-diseases.com/), Andre Agassi, J.K Rowling, Jessica Simpson, Rupert Grint, and Justin Timberlake all have an aversion to spiders. Johnny Depp, Emma Watson, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, and Woody Allen….the list goes on. Perhaps the real question is, who isn’t afraid of spiders?

“Various therapies and self-help groups can work wonders to overcome arachnophobia,” the Celebrities site claims. “Gradual exposure to spider’s pictures or even touching the spiders can be of great help in beating arachnophobia.”

I’m not interested in beating arachnophobia. I think it’s wise to avoid anything that has fangs, injects venom, and liquefies its prey. But spiders seem hell bent on making my acquaintance. I’ve had spiders appear on the inside of my windshield while driving. Skitter across my table at a coffee shop. And parachute onto my salad while eating al fresco. Charlotte’s Web be damned, I’m not going to pet them!

One summer, I walked into our bedroom and found hundreds of spiderlings crawling over the walls and ceiling. Of course I screamed. It was my personal Nightmare on Elm Street. I’ve read that a female spider can deliver as many as 3,000 eggs-and judging by the number of tiny creatures scrambling over the walls, that sounded about right.

Steve and I grabbed wet paper towels and started crushing the seething mass. In the face of such an invasion, I was suddenly brave. Fueled by fear and anger, I dabbed hard at the walls. It took more than an hour to kill the ones we could see, and afterwards, I still imagined I felt them crawling on my scalp. Lice, I wouldn’t have minded.  But spiders?  I’d have to set my head on fire.

The only place in the world that doesn’t have spiders is Antarctica. But since the job market is especially tough in that neck of the woods, I’m resigned to fighting these seasonal battles. Sometimes I wonder if the spiders are keeping track of how many of their relatives I’ve killed. I wonder if they’re plotting revenge and just waiting for Steve to take an extended business trip. Then they’ll corner me in the basement and ensnare me in their silky webs. Descend upon me with thousands of fangs….It’s a horrifying thought.  And one reason why I’m thankful that my husband doesn’t travel much these days.

 “Naturalists have pondered this for years: there are spiders whose bite can cause the place bitten to rot and to die, sometimes more than a year after it was bitten. As to why spiders do this, the answer is simple. It’s because spiders think this is funny, and they don’t want you ever to forget them.”   – Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

A HARRY K. POST

Posted on by
4

As I approach a milestone birthday, I occasionally think about aging lawyers, especially those who have spent their careers representing poor criminal defendants.  Many of these lawyers cannot retire–some for financial reasons and some based on a compulsion to keep helping the poor.  Early in my career, I wrote about an elderly lawyer in an email to my mother.  Twenty years later, I realize that I was mean to old Abe Gray (not his real name), and what was then to me a comical situation is now an example of the resilience of experience and, yes, age.  Here is my email:

Abe Gray is a fixture in court.  A bit like the screw that holds down the tap on your faucet – he’s there but you don’t notice him until something goes wrong.  Monday, he got noticed.

Abe looks to be in his eighties and all of the old court officers say he’s been around forever.  He always wears a wrinkled suit with an old man’s obligatory dandruff.  Abe’s client was a stocky young black man charged with trespass and disorderly conduct who had to be told to remove his hat.  This admonition caused a guffaw from the young man; his guffaw only worsened the scolding from the judge who went on about decorum-this and respect-that before sending him back to his seat like a kid in the corner to wait a long time before she would have his case called again.

When the court recessed, Abe tried to explain his client’s behavior.  I may have attracted his attention because we’d made eye contact, a difficult thing given Abe’s permanent downward head bend.  About his client he said, “It was just a nervous laugh – he does that you know.”  I certainly didn’t, and was pretty sure that neither did Abe.  As our conversation continued, Abe insisted that I probably would not like being a lawyer for the poor very soon.  “But it beats sittin’ in ya office doin’ nuthin’ don’t it?” which he followed with a friendly punch in the arm, a hearty laugh, and a consequent bout of coughing that only years of smoking can cause.

When court reconvened, Abe and I ended up sitting next to each other.   A stern looking young lawyer whom I had seen run into the ladies’ room the day before to puke loudly into the sink (her stern expression was meant to mask an intense anxiety) sat on his other side. We were near the seats reserved for police officers.  Abe decided he wanted to do what court officers most often have to rebuke lawyers for – chat. And not just chat.  Abe wanted to talk about the police.

So there I am, trying to be decorous and show respect for the court, listening to Abe go on in the sort of loud voice the hard of hearing often think is a whisper, “the cops testiLIE, not testiFY” and how “THEY apparently can wear hats in the courtroom – look at that one over there – she’s got a baseball cap on just like my client’s!”  He actually pointed.  I was mortified. Some of the police were frowning in our direction.  I smiled meekly.  The stern looking puker turned a whiter shade of pale.  Mind you, women are allowed to wear hats in court; men are not, even policemen.

I crossed my leeward leg away from Abe, leaned forward, elbow on knee, chin in hand, and pretended I was fascinated by the proceedings.  He quieted.

About five minutes later, Abe’s client’s name was called.  The client approached the bar, hat in hand, eyes down.  Abe didn’t stand to address the court.  When an uncomfortable silence followed, the clerk announced the name of the defendant’s lawyer (it’s not unusual for a lawyer to be in the hallway or another courtroom – the clerk will say the lawyer’s name as a way of prompting help from the court officers in locating a lawyer).  Abe did not respond; the clerk scanned the courtroom and landed his gaze on us.  He repeated Abe’s name more loudly this time.  I couldn’t figure out why Abe still hadn’t stood. Maybe he was helping stern-face with something?  So I turned around.

Abe’s head was tilted uncharacteristically upwards.  His eyes were shut. His mouth wide open.  His arms were crossed over his chest.  Sleeping?  Dead?  God, I hoped not.  I poked his left elbow with my index finger and whispered, “Attorney Gray?”  No response.  I pressed all four fingers into his left arm twice and, a little louder said, “Attorney Gray.”  No response.  Now I was worried.  I returned his earlier punch three times to no effect other than tilting his torso towards stern-face and disrupting his dandruff.

By this time, everyone was staring at us: The judge, the clerk, the probation officers, the court officers, the police, Abe’s client, stern-face (who was leaning as far away from Abe as she could without pushing herself intimately onto the man next to her, an appalled expression on her face).  I’m not certain what inspired me, but I grabbed the middle finger of Abe’s closest hand and tugged three times as hard as I could without popping his arthritic joints and said again, “ATTORNEY GRAY!”

He snuffled awake, looked around a bit dazed, asked me, “Wha- what?”  “Your case” I said, inclining my head towards his hatless client.  He leapt to his feet with amazing agility, strode confidently to the microphone and said, “Attorney Gray for the defendant, your honor.  He then reviewed the entire case in the light most favorable to his client finishing his effective synopsis with “therefore I move to dismiss.”

Since I wrote this piece, Abe has passed away and, with his passing, I reflected on the experience.  When I was younger, I was concerned about Abe’s client and thought nothing of poking fun at what I perceived to be Abe’s decrepitude. Today, I admire that Abe demonstrated an uncanny ability to go from dreaming to eloquent advocacy, even though it took some prompting.  He fought for the poor his entire working life which deserves my respect.  I hope that by continuing to find humor in the experience I have not dishonored his memory.

ANOTHER TAKE ON THE COUNTRY

Posted on by
8

I’m reconsidering the country and I’m not talking about the U.S., Israel, or even what should be the Palestinian State.  I’m talking outside Boston’s Beltway–aka, my idea of wilderness.

A bit of background.  Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, I spent the early years of my life in Carteret (Exit 12, N.J. Turnpike).  Now Carteret was no sprawling metropolis.  It was the kind of small town loaded with bars, churches, and factories.  One where kids ran after the mosquito spray truck ’cause the smell was intoxicating.  But it was also a town when, not smogged from its factories’ exhale, you could see the New York skyline.  For me, country meant the empty lots scattered through town where I chased grasshoppers and lightning bugs, and the park where I played Little League.

I now live in New England, where rural is a spit away and many people I know have always spent some serious time in the hinterland.

When I first moved to Boston from Chicago, people used to pull me along to their cabins, farms, and tiny structures they optimistically called “country houses.”

Sorry, but I’m in the Fran Lebowitz camp.  As she said, “I am not the type who wants to go back to the land; I am the type who wants to go back to the hotel.”

My idea of civilization has always included running water and, most importantly, bathrooms.  We didn’t claw our way to the top of the food chain to shit in the woods.  Which was what my early years of going to the
country often entailed.  Sure, there were outhouses, but I was toilet trained decades ago.  Who wants to use a wooden porta-potty for days at a time–let alone ever?

Especially someone like me who prefers my own bathroom to all others.

In those days, if I really felt I had to go (both to the country and the bathroom) I devised ways to cope.  One way, really.  Kaopectate.  Yep.  I slugged that gunk like an alcoholic sucks down a bottle of whiskey thinking
it might be his last.  And it worked.  I could go nearly a week without excreting anything other than urine, and that usually from the porch if it were night.  The dark and quiet scared the hell out of me.  Who knew
(besides The Shadow) what awaited in the pitch black miles away from any streetlights.  I didn’t want to know.

Truth be told, days weren’t much better.  People wanted to hike and the problem with that was simple.  Unless I’m chasing a ball, the only thing worse than running is walking.  And walking uphill worse than that.
And god forbid I was dragged out into the boonies during winter.  That meant cross-country skiing or snowshoeing.  There are things more painful than traipsing to nowhere.

But age and upward mobility (mine and virtually everyone I know) does have its rewards.  Going out to visit friends in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine no longer means suffering a case of constipation.  Everyone has bathrooms, most have lakes, and nobody minds if I don’t swim in them or
shlep around them.  Sitting on the porch and reading has become acceptable.

In other words, I can actually pretend that I’m home.  There may not be a lot of wonderful things to say about aging (dinner conversations among us old Jews often have to do with everyone reciting their own litany of ailments) but these days going to the country with friends or relatives is most definitely one of them.

In fact, I just returned from my cousin’s half home in Monterey, Massachusetts, deep in the Western part of the state.  I say half home since he and his wife live there about half the week all year round.  An area of my state that houses summer homes for Bostonians and New Yorkers.

Rife with cultural activities (Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony, Jacob’s Pillow, a world famous modern dance company, Shakespeare and Company…) we aren’t exactly talking rural.  This is my
kind of country.  Satelite TV.  Birdwatching, but from a deck.  Plopping down in a comfortable seat in a tented pavilion, enjoying Dr. John and Wynton Marsalis.  My kind of “great outdoors.”  Especially when it includes great friends.  It’s doesn’t get any better if I’m gonna leave my beloved concrete.

I’m just a spoiled city rat, unwilling to spend my time in a retrobred context.  I wasn’t a Boy Scout, Cubbie, and the only knot I ever learned to tie was for my shoes.  I want to enjoy my country time without slurping bottles of Kaopectate.   And these days I do.

Q: Why is New Jersey called “The Garden State”?
A: Because “Oil and Petrochemical Refinery State” wouldn’t fit on a
license plate.