If you don't play The Flozberk game, prepare to be HATCHET JOBBED by them

If you don't play ball with the Flozzies on their terms, you suffer various combinations of getting hatchet jobbed and flicked away like a roach. If you're lucky, like Tony and his boy, it's just the latter. Let us first tackle a small part of the former:

YES HATCHET FOR YOU! Reagan, Langdon, and I have all been plain hung out to dry by The Hatchet Jobbers in Mom/Mutchie, Neila/Mom, and Neila/Tiffany configurations at various points over a span of 45 years and counting. Even Dad and yes, even the scoundrel John have been nailed.

It started with Reagan. Early on, Mom and Mutchie detested him while being outwardly nice, derisively calling him "the bell boy," for he worked as a bell hop in a nice hotel downtown. The barrage of gossip and derision was constant for years, attacking his habits, family, intelligence, and very lean, toned physique.

A few of the innumerable examples:

"Moustarda" "Reagan"
Often Mom recounted the story of when she sent young Reagan to the store for mustard and he held his hand out for the sub-one dollar cost. She found that disgraceful, a grown man with nary a buck on him.

The translation is (and it's best said with great incredulity), "So, I sent this jackoff to da sto' to get me sumptin', and he actually had the noive to want the money! I mean, whass da world comin' to?"

I maintain that it shouldn't have been an issue - the sender immediately pays, throws a cherry on top as tanks, and the runner's coffers are irrelevant, period.

Immediately after our cookout ended and Neila and Reagan went home, onto the phone with Mutchie lept Mom to get validation and gossip about that momentous incident. Even though the conversation was, as always, not in English, the subject was crystal clear.

After, as part of my long campaign to protect those kids from our wacky older folks, I gave her a hard time.

ME: Why ya got-sta leap to the phone to gossip 'bout dat mustard shit?
MOM: We weren't talking about that.
ME: Really?
MOM: No.
ME: What's the Turkish word for "mustard?"
MOM: We were speaking Greek.
ME: What's the Greek word for "mustard?"
MOM: (crickets chirping)
ME: What's the Greek word for "Reagan?"
MOM: Ha siktir bok! Pesevenk!

Captain Reagan
Later, perhaps 1979, an especially weird dig at the Reagan, repeated many times, was that he "thinks he's a pilot," RE: his driving. That had to be Mutchie, since at that point I don't think he'd driven Mom anywhere.

Hard to pin down what in the hell that means. He clearly drove with some sort of flair or aplomb that she found remarkable. I recall he had a big gray Oldsmobile boat, perhaps a Delta 88, then.

Reagan drove a ton of miles in service for Mutchie, and later, Mom, with no mishaps I'm aware of. Them frittering away their lives ragging on the dude over that shit is a shame on several levels. Driving is important...and fun - hell, people should get into it.

And, OMG - Mutchie was, by far, the worst driver I've ever seen, unskilled and foolish enough to merit a separate article. So much wrong in this big bucket of wrong.

Furthermore, an automobile driver IS a pilot! Mom disputed that, claiming aviation only. I called hogwash. The interwebs wuz many years away, so resolution was at first elusive.

The Truth Shall Pilot You to Freedom
Not long after that, we were departing on a cruise. The ship leader guy got on the blower and squawked that we were just waiting for the pilot to board to get us down the river into the Gulf. He nary finished the sentence before I pounced and pointed out to Mom that the ship was clearly not a plane and the pilot was clearly not a non-pilot.

Enjoying the moment on what turned out to be a great vacation, she just laughed and nodded and I left it at that. It was rare for Mom to take being proven wrong with grace.

Reagan was my buddy and I often defended him like a guard dog when the bullshit got too thick. Some of the arguments with Mom were landscape-shifting, for she detested being made the fool and I stood hard behind my convictions. While he lacked most of the qualities impressive to Mom in a man, he might be the only person on Earth calm enough to withstand year after year of Neila and Ryan.

Neila's sheer prettiness, now long-disintegrated with aplomb, was about all she had going for her and it's not like Reagan was keeping her dumb ass from being an astronaut or the conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. Despite his flaws, in many ways we've been lucky to have him and the hatchet job was heavily petty, absurd, and hypocrisy-ridden.

Reagan fell squarely into line. Many years later, I would again fight the hatchet, but on his son-in-law Langdon's behalf.

Insufficient Outpouring of Discernible Grief
Dad got a taste, too. When Mom about died from the kidney stone catastrophe in 1978, she picked a big fight with him after having someone whisper in her ear that Dad didn't seem all that upset at the hospital during the bleakest, code blue days of the ordeal.

She really raked him over the coals in one of the most absurd arguments I've ever witnessed. I'd be so embarrassed to raise a stink over something like that, it would haunt me forever. Dad could be sort of a bonehead at times, but he never did bad things. Every so often, though, Mom would be out to get him, dredging up old stuff that pissed her off or conjuring up new ones out of thin air.

The point, though, is that some goddamn lunatic told Mom that Dad was not sufficiently upset by her potential impending demise, hatchet jobbing the super-nice guy who had bent over backward for each one of the possible suspects. I know the culprit sure as fuck wasn't me. Neila? I seriously doubt it. Reagan? Fuck no. John? Nah.

At that time, only one in our midst had the right flair for treachery to inflict that senseless stressor upon both Dad and Mom.

It was Mutchie, methinks.

Dad's defense was that he was trying to be strong for me and the family. I find that perfectly valid and find it beyond doubt that he truly adored Mom. The whole damn thing was insane.

Next on the Chopping Block
Langdon, Princess Corn Log's husband and a guy who seemed like a real straight-shooter, didn't fall into line like Dad and Reagan did. No straight-shooter could.

Despite loving his wife dearly, he was often very badly vexed by the whirlpool of dysfunction in her baggage compartment that he'd stumbled into. Unlike Dad and Reagan, who had accepted their fates and tumbled into compliance, Langdon still got frequent cases of the WTF???s.

That would not be tolerated.

It started with Neila insisting he was an alcoholic in urgent need of inpatient treatment. My hard look into that did not concur.

Then Mom started in with claims that Neila and Reagan, who worked at Langdon's used car lot in a nepotism-drenched sweetheart deal, were getting shafted on their pay and that Reagan practically ran the place.

Both claims were resoundingly absurd and Langdon often lamented to us that it cost him money to have them working there.

Mom also claimed Langdon had been a punching bag for his father for many years, with the level of abuse robust. His dad seemed like a nice guy to me, I doubt his mother would have allowed that, and actually discussing the matter with Langdon, who was very earnest with me, put Mom's claim into serious doubt.

So, the guy was an alcoholic who shafts his workers/in-laws and, as a victim of severe abuse, is especially likely to be an abuser himself. That is a very risky prospect for a partner.

The likely translation is that he liked to drink for recreation and stress relief with zero bad incidents, ever, was not a pushover when encroached by freaky family, and got his hide tanned a few times by his East Texas daddy.

Neila's meddling almost took down Camp Corn Log.

Obviously, Neila was the source of the misinformation. But, wait - there's more!

We've Traced the Call and it's Coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!
Near the end of Mom's life, I mentioned that Langdon really seemed like a pretty honest ol' boy. She roundly scoffed, saying one can't believe a single thing he says.

Wowzers! Those are quite disparate positions.

Turns out that Langdon had mentioned to Mom that he comes from a pretty wealthy family background. However, Tiffany told Mom that Langdon actually did not come from money.

Why? Tiffany later looked me square in the eye and said she didn't want Grandma to like him because of money. What a bizarre gambit. It's like having your mate sneak off to the kitchen at Denny's and return to whisper, "I told them you were a child molester so you might get extra pancakes."

If someone did that to me, I'd kick their ass. Mom died invalidly thinking that Langdon was a scumbag. That's awful. I knew the guy pretty well, we partied together, and I backed him up. In fact, the last argument I had with Mom before a long peaceful stretch at the end was fighting Langdon's hatcheting.

Soon, Langdon fell into line like those before him, and with greasy gusto, too.

Now I am the target.

I shall not be falling into line.

EDIT 2026 - After years of consideration and investigation, it has become clear that Langdon has not been nearly the good guy I thought him to be.

Golden Hatchet
Unlike the prior hatchet jobs, which were at least somewhat based on superiority-complex based pettiness and idiocy, mine has a cha-ching factor.

In or about early 2018, Neila became offended that I and Dad had taken measures to level the playing field after a series of Flozberk rampage on my family's peace and resources that cost a literal fortune.

During said rampage, my household was thrown to the dogs in a disaster that could have been averted for just a tiny percentage of what The Flozberk Dramas wreaked. Dad was pissed about that and wanted to make things right.

I pushed back against Neila. The hatchet job was deployed.

I was, according to them, a thief and elder abuser dishonorably exploiting Dad even though the whole thing was his idea. A power struggle broke out and we became greatly at odds. Neila was not inclined to communicate or cooperate with me and even would send her lost soul, habitual criminal junkie son Ryan to care for Dad and Tasha instead of summoning us and our excellent care.

Princess Corn Log soon joined the hatchet job machine, actually making the utterly baffling claim, in a written exchange we call The Monster Clash, that:

I want to tell you to take care of grandpa [sic], because I know you and Lisa are incapable of caring for another human being (just ask her mother). I know this “care” would not last a week.

As a human being, it would be unconscionable of me to punish my grandfather with your inept care.

For starters, Lisa left home and her violent, bitter, drunken mother, a truly intolerable wretch who, like Neila and Reagan, was estranged from all her (TWELVE!) siblings, at age 17. Never had either of us been responsible for caring for her and I never even met the woman.

Our care of Dad and Tasha was, as described by Dad on video, excellent. The Flozberks, in contrast, coughed up lots of quantity, but their quality was riddled with half-assedness, much of it actually dangerous, just as one would expect from such cretins.

Ironically, the incident that prompted The Monster Clash started with a basal cell carcinoma on Dad's face that Lisa, not Neila or Tiffany, found despite the fact that Neila had a long history of elder care, albeit rather spotty, and Tiffany was a fucking registered nurse that Dad put through school.

I swear, some things ya just can't make up.

It got worse, though: After Dad was killed, The Princess bowled us over by spreading rumors that Dad had injuries indicating violent abuse and that I had killed him.

Now, Neila is trying to parlay the hatchetings into a six-figure windfall as she uses them to justify her attempt to shaft me out of much of my rightful share of Dad's house. These well-documented hatchet and shaft job abominations and would have made Dad blind with anger, sadness, and embarrassment.

Well, actually, blinder.

*SIGH* Those wacky Flozzies.

Oh, Yeah - I Almost Forgot About John
The Golden Psycho is among the last people I'd prefer to defend, but in my world truth roundly trumps personal preferences/distastes and self-interest-fueled agendas.

During the war between John and Neila to control/exploit their demented father Aydin ("The Incident"), the hatchet job machine was obviously let loose. There is no question that The Golden Psycho's character and deeds have long left much to be desired, but his concerns regarding the handling of his father and his resources were not invalid.

So, John was mega-demonized by the hatchet machine. With Mom, he went from the blindly-defended overadored Golden Child who could do no wrong to the most evil creature we had ever known. One side was 100% at fault, the other side 0%.

Of course, that's ridiculous - the truth was in the middle and both sides bore fault for the conflagration that decimated the ends of my parents' lives. That absurd Madonna vs. Lucifer, all vs nothing extremist imbalance that is a foundation of The Flozberk Way served to corrupt understanding of serious issues that moved mountains in our lives.

At a time when being sensible was most needed, it was thrown to the wind and as a result all involved suffered terribly.

This insidious hatchet that cuts both the targets and the bearers must be put out to pasture if the generations-long carnival of misery is to finally be stemmed.

Afterword
Know that what is outlined here is but wee splinter of the The Hatcheteers' acts. Even John's first wife, a solid high school teacher named Kay, was hatcheted to the ground by Mom even while being called "dear" and "honey." She was too old for him, not sophisticated enough, her family is Baptist, she's not a real teacher, she wants things, yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda.

And, Aydin ran a hatchet job on Mom and Dad, trying to turn John and Neila against them after she violated his wish that she never remarry after she divorced him because he cheated on her and gave her an STD after she refused to allow him to habitually fuck her in the ass.

Just...wow.

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