A lowbrow holiday invasion of Dad's turf

Turning onto Dad's street on July 4, 2018, I was surprised to see Flozberk cars. In conflict with them since January after a lifetime on good terms, we, like divorced parents on bad terms, tried to stay out of each other's way while taking care of Dad and engaging in a power struggle with the poor old fella in the middle.

Having seen nary a Flozberk for about 6 months amid zero dialogue (all the communication had been from me with no responses), I was looking forward to hanging out with at least 2 of them and certainly didn't want to mess up a holiday evening. I was looking forward to just eating Lisa's Kick-Ass Ribs, drinking beer and chillin' with Dad + whoever saw fit to treat us in a reasonable manner.

The circus began before we could even exit the car.

Soup's On, Local Vermin!
Upon pulling into the driveway, the haphazard, disrespectful way those clods exist was yet again demonstrated to us - there was a leaky, foul-smelling trash bag of refuse discarded on Dad's front porch.

The trash container was a 25 foot stroll from the porch across smooth, level, dry, manicured grass. Even in bare swimmin' feet, not a problem. Why would taking out the trash require a halftime intermission? Was the baby choking? Were they acting out a play in the back yard and someone's cue came up?

One wonders.

There are always stray dogs about. A family of raccoons lived in the storm drain across the street and one must avoid attracting them due to baylisascaris procyonis, among other obvious concerns.

It was near dusk. At sunset mice, roof rats, possums, raccoons, and even coyotes come out in force. Teaching them that one's front porch is a food source is a piss-poor idea.

Yep - more typical, mindless Flozberk half-assed shabbiness. That's just NOT how you do things when enjoying someone's facilities - you treat the property of others with the utmost respect, end of story. And, we're talking about one of the best neighborhoods in the state, not a damn trailer park. We treat motel rooms better than they treated Dad's turf.

The stain from that needless misdeed on the tile of Dad's porch actually outlived him and as the year wore on we regularly found dirty diapers and trash bags in places where they absolutely should not have been.

Lonely Old Man. Cornhole. Beer.
Entering the house, Neila was in the den. She wished me a transparently insincere happy Fourth and went out back to the pool with Reagan, Langdon, Tiffany, and the latter two's fresh crotchfruit.

Dad sat alone at the kitchen table. I asked if he was feeling lonely there all by his lonesome, he replied with a chuckle, “Yeah, kind of.” He was clearly happy to see us. Or, kind of see us, since he was blinded by ARMD.

I went out back to say hi and got a nice vibe from the two boars, but a distinctly less pleasant one from the two sows. The baby seemed indifferent, for it's truly challenging to poison a baby's mind.

In due time, young one. In due time.

They were playing a bean bag game unfamiliar to me called “cornhole.” The two fellows and I had a mildly amusing chat involving alternate meanings of that word as I bit my tongue to keep confined the references to The Sultan of Sodomy swirling about my head.

Little did I know that soon Tiffany would teach us a thing or three about cornhole.

I went inside and told Lisa they were playing cornhole. As expected, she immediately quipped, "Too bad Aydin ain't here." Dad, well aware of The Sultan's reputation for cornholing, threw another chuckle.

OK, then. With that bit of unpleasantness behind us and thirst banging on the door, it was time for a cold beer...

Indoor Fizzy Blizzard
...exceptin' fer that it wasn't. They had chugged it all down without bothering to replenish it from the beverage cache that was always at the ready in the next room. They long knew those who deplete must restock.

*SIGH* I shoulda known.

Time for plan B - drink some cold water. Nope, that was all gone, too.

*SIGH* I shoulda known.

I set my timer and got 6 beers and 6 waters to quick-chill in the freezer. Opening it, I gasped. Reagan had put a bunch of that stupid flavored fizzy water shit in the freezer and about 6 cans ruptured, making a hell of a mess resembling a little blizzard.

In a world where all have a timer-equipped smartphone, such things should never happen. And set the timer BEFORE you do the deed, making forgetting impossible. No timer, no deed. Same for cooking - turn off appliance before removing food. Ask me how I came up with that one :(

I stupidly asked Lisa if she was gonna clean it up and she stared me down like I was nuts. “HELL no....that's their fuckin' problem,” bringing yet another chuckle from Dad. There may have been a couple of other choice words thrown in.

So, in the few minutes since arriving, we'd found a Flozberk Fuckup on the porch, in the fridge (two, actually), and a whopper in the freezer. They did apparently manage to somehow refrain from messing up the backyard and pool too badly, though.

Ketchup Sweat
Holiday ribs without beer? No way. I delayed dinner and chatted with Dad while the beer chilled, then most of us laid into cold beer and Lisa's Kick-Ass Ribs. Neila and Tiffany would have none of that, though, and ate hot dogs and corn or some shit.

Well, definitely corn.

Reagan and Langdon hit those ribs HARD. Neither Neila nor Tiffany could really cook worth a damn and Tiffany's Uber-Restrictive Impressionable Fantasy Hypochondriac Diet had poor Langdon in perpetual food prison.

Lisa is an artiste in the kitchen. 'Nuff said. NOM NOM NOM!!!

Dad, who knows where the bear shits in the buckwheat, later remarked that he hoped the guys "didn't get their wings clipped" for the social acceptance they extended by daring to eat the pariah-tainted offerings.

As we chomped, Neila asked Reagan to make her a hot dog - ketchup only - which is well, a travesty. But, fine...whatever. Reagan popped the top on one of the three partial bottles (they are habitually wasteful people) of organic ketchup they had in Dad's fridge (Tiffany, a massive pain in the ass, only eats organic, gluten-free, and no soy), failed to shake it, and drenched the thing in gnarly, translucent ketchup sweat.

"First time doing that, eh?" I had to ask the 60+ year old man.

The Knowing Gazes
Reagan howled with laughter and brought forth his guilty, knowing gaze - eyebrows high, eyes big, huge smile, howling laughter. When called out for being less than ideally sharp or earnest, that's what he'd tend to do, a sort of "Ya got me...and ain't it a hoot!" thing that was not without charm.

It was nice to see it again.

Neila also deploys a knowing gaze, but it's a smug, knowing gaze used to intimidate or disarm. The words that accompany it, split about evenly between threats and promises, turn out to be false. Everyone who knows Neila to whom I've described that gaze thing affirms this observation. It's a big part of her M.O..

The matter begged follow-up: "Ya gonna feed that ketchup sweat thing to yer wife, are ya?"

The bell rang on round 2 of the guilty, knowing gaze. I've always liked talking to Reagan.

"Yeah, it's OK." Another shot of thicker, now-top-skimmed condiment sort of covered the ketchup-sweated mess.

None of that could happen in our world. We treat one another well and scratch and claw to do things right, which sometimes means starting over when things go astray.

That minor occurrence was actually quite interesting and meaningful. Those people are simply shabby. Yeah, they care, they try, they love, they help, but all too often, things with them just turn out shabby, if not much, much worse.

1 + 1 = 13
They left to watch fireworks. Tiffany left 13 light bulbs burning in the 1 bedroom + 1 bath she was using. Her computer was in the den on an arm rest, power cord strung across the opening of the wet bar. You just don't do shit like that in the home of a blind man with a big, old, clumsy dog.

We left before they got back, then I returned the next day for our normal Thursday dinner shortly after Tiffany left. It was an interesting evening.

Hey, Old Man...YOU'RE Cleaning Up After ME, Bitch!
I arrived to find Dad, age 87.5, bent over in the kitchen, wrestling with a baby walker Tiffany left smack between the dog bowl and the pantry holding the dog food. Not 10 seconds had passed and I was already facepalming.

After I explained to him what the mysterious device blocking the kitchen was, he bemoaned the computer that again was left on the arm rest after I'd put it on the bar and cleared the hazard. The only reply I could muster was:

They're fuckin' morons, Boss. Whaddaya gonna do?

Dad was a very proper gentleman and wanted things where they belonged. Once he lost most of his vision, that became all the more important.

And, seriously - when you are at war with someone, never leave your computer accessible to them. A person of even moderate prowess could easily, with, say, a red USB drive always carried on their TOOL keychain, crack into the OS, circumvent all protections and install malware that is near-impossible to detect or remove and can spread across multiple networked devices and platforms, giving silent access to literally everything.

It's one thing to try to break into a computer over a network - not too hard but still often challenging - and another entirely when you can pick it up with your own hands. That's a piece of cake with total, invisible violation easily attained.

Emission Impossible: A Legend is Born
I went in the den and noticed my old bedroom was again lit up, every bulb burning. Simply unbelievable for a mother past age 30.

Then it hit me. An subtle assault on my delicate nasal membranes. Distinctive, bringing to mind burning wire insulation in a stagnant swamp. Obviously, a robust load of dog logs had been excreted nearby after the consumption of a rotten squirrel or worse. Tasha's body and ears slumped at my "Tasha, what did you do?" growl.

Dad trailing behind me, I checked the bathroom and found the offending matter.

ME: Ah-HA!
DAD: Where did she caca?
ME: In the toilet.
Dad: What???
ME: Methinks the "she" in question has two legs and either has some huge intestinal parasites or has recently eaten corn.
DAD: Huh???
ME: There's a COLOSSAL corn-mottled turd in the toilet.
DAD: She didn't flush it?
ME: Hell, I wasn't there, but I can attest there is a colossal, corn-mottled turd in the toilet.
DAD: God almighty!

In the toilet, with perfect 12 and 6 o'clock orientation, rested a deposit strongly suspected to be of human origin despite being no less than 6 and sixty-three sixty-forth inches long and an eyebrow-raising 1 and nine-sixteenths inches in diameter.

That's about 56 cubic inches of made in the USA corn log.

The corn rendered a calico pattern to the mob boss of a butt chonger. A non-divine halo of brown leached around it, resembling a tobacco burst finish on one of my guitars. Just one square mass of well-marked toilet paper suggested a job ill-done.

And, it was pointed straight north. Yes, the corn log somehow knew where magnetic north is. One must respect that.

A Shutterbug's Dilemma
There I stood, phone in hand, struggling with whether to photograph this a-maize-ing harbinger of doom to add to my museum of Flozberk horrors. I'm not one to turn down an interesting shot, but the line must be drawn somewhere and this was it. Into my pocket slid the phone.

It was time to send this monstrosity a couple of feet closer to its rightful place in hell while cracking a flurry of jokes. Dad and I had all sorts of running gags based on barnyard and toilet humor and we used to watch The Three Stooges together every morning before he took me to school, so I started there, invoking the iconic "Contact!" gag we often mimicked when testing the cotton gin control panels he used to build.

ME: Let's get this propeller a-spinnin', Boss. Contact!
ME: CONTACT!!!
DAD: Oh...heh heh...contact!
TOILET: Flush, gurgle gurgle!
DAD: Heh heh heh.

LOL! He remembered, a good 40 years later.

The corn log spun, painting the sides of the bowl, then wedged in the narrow part of the oval like a fallen tree in a rain-swollen creek. For a moment, it seemed like it would prevail, but water tends to win. The log bent, was bisected, and vanished from sight like the Titanic. I could swear I felt the ground rumble a bit, but wuz prolly just caught up in the moment.

The jokes flowed.

I wonder if the plumbing will suffer?
Did the corn log lift Tiffany off the seat like a ram jack?
Did she need to go to the hospital?
Will this affect the price of corn futures?
Was it the First Corn Log of the Apocalypse?
The Eighth Deadly Sin?
The Seventh Corn Log of a Seventh Corn Log?

Then the stench from the flush wafted to nose level and I shit you not - that was no laughing matter. It was time for an exodus and a couple of drinks if we could stop laughing long enough to git 'em down.

More Spoor
About the premises, evidence of The Flozberk Way abounded. Open bottles of water with but a drink or two gone were scattered. Same for partially-consumed cans of fizzy water. A lone corn on the cob, of all bloody things, sat, left out all night, on a stack of 31 paper plates haphazardly snatched from the pile in the cabinet.

That was not surprising. Days before, we found some leftover shrimp and corn in the fridge astonishingly mummified in about 25 feet of plastic wrap and still not well-sealed. Dad claimed it was my 50th birthday present from The Flozberks, but no such designations were noticed nor well-wishes received.

The differences between The Flozberks' procedures and values and the ones the sensible former engineer Dad held and passed on to me can only be described as staggering.

A Proud, Pungent Legacy
I shit you not, Dad and I laughed our asses off about the Princess Corn Log incident for the rest of his life. Never did I see him laugh so much and so hard. Sometimes he'd misspeak and call her Princess Corny Dog, indeed a more appetizing moniker, but it just didn't do the matter justice.

So I composed a wee ditty to keep the official record square, getting the biggest laugh ever from Dad:

A corny dog be a treat you eat at the fair
A corn log be lain by Tiffany's butt, there (point at SW corner of house)

The Nurse Tiffany Stimulerated Memorial Corn Log
For years I wrestled with my declination to photograph the corn log, for, as the ditty grew into a song and then a music video, the notion of props took hold.

An Amazon purchase proved disappointing, containing, like, 3 corn bits. Who the shit eats but a trio of kernels? That's just silly. And it bounced like a crazy ball, thwarting creative expression and making me chase it about the damn room, crawling under the table and such.

It was, by far, among the worst dozen or so stimulerated corn logs I've ever bought from a vendor bearing the name of one of the world's great rivers. So not cool. It's now used as a plug to keep gnats outta the bong.

Despair not, though - we've taken the liberty of producing a replica befitting the original, though not nearly as huge. A million thanks to "scrutables" on the great website Instructables, and a trillion kudos for her hilarious intro:

...So to teach him a lesson, I decided to leave a big ole corny turd on his desk for him to find. And, because I am not a psycho, I made it from chocolate.
The thing turned out rather well, I say.

As for the "Memorial" part, yeah, even with all that wine out there it's very likely Tiffany is still alive as I write this. The "Memorial" is for the corn log, not her.

May it rest in peace.

TRIVIA - The silver platter used in the Princess Corn Log music video was a gift from C.C. Freeman, the fellow who built our house in 1981. The Flozberk Twins fucked up Xmas for me on the night it was unwrapped.

Wallow in the undeniable delight of the Princess Corn Log music video

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