everybody blamed his old man

"Looking in the mirror just now, I realized something. I look kind of like a young Jerry Reed minus the curls."

"Yes," replied the wife, "You do."

Her quick agreement caught me off guard. Maura usually responds to my self-deprecating observations with something along the lines of "Oh, no. You look fine." (Not that my intent is to fish for compliments, mind you, though the pond is well-stocked.) Even more telling was that she followed up her response with an offer to trim my sideburns, despite her long held and deep-seated reluctance about such matters. She has balked on several occasions when I've asked her help in trimming a few wayward hairs missed by my barber; for her to offer her services unsolicited means that my personal style has crossed a line.

Not that I did so intentionally. Semi-intentionally, perhaps. My preference is to keep my hair buzzed short, but the past dozen weeks or so have been rather busy. The weekdays off that I would normally use to visit the barber's have been consistently booked up with other, more pressing affairs like vet appointments for the animals or shoveling out the driveway and walk after an overnight snowstorm.

So my hair has grown unchecked for three months, which isn't that rare an occurance. What made this time different, though, was my decision to not keep my sideburns in check during my weekly shaves. The decision was made to avoid the hassle of trying to keep both sides even while having to clean the clots of hair out the blades with each and every pass of the razor. So I let them grow, and grow they did -- down past my earlobes and out onto my cheeks, and eventually forming little projecting curls.

I was okay with their unchecked development. After all, they were going to be buzzed clean off come the next visit to the barbershop. I didn't realize that it had become a household issue until I was standing by Maura's desk at work, and she reached up and tugged one of the curls while I was talking to her. She said then that they were "kinda funny," though I began to notice a gradual escalation of negative descriptive rhetoric -- nothing directly confrontational, but clear in intent (like "seventies man hair," for example).

If things have reached the stage where she thinks I'd qualify for a quest appearance on the Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour or the second season of Alice, it's clearly time for me to take swift action in the interest of keeping the domestic peace. Until then, however, I plan on singing my nasally off-key renditions of "Eastbound and Down" and "U.S. Male" in Maura's presence at every opportunity.

Jerry Reed - Amos Moses (from RCA Country Legends, 2001) - Bitterandrew was a Squarehead, and lived with his wife on a hill/He had a powerful pair of sideburns, but they made his poor sweetie ill...

all is not lost, not yet

Well, wish in one hand and crap in the other and see which one piles up first. - Mike Nelson

I wish I knew what was up with Super Lumina's right front tire.

I wish there was a presidential candidate I could vote for without feeling like I've compromised my principles.

I wish I could take a month off of work to catch up on the massive backlog of books, movies, videogames, and household projects that has built up over the past couple years.

I wish the Pepi the feral cat would let me get close enough to see if there is something wrong with his (or her; most likely "her") teeth.

I wish I could find a decent Wordpress template that fits Armagideon Time's needs without requiring massive modification.

I wish I knew what box my Psychotronic film guides got packed up into.

I wish I was immortal and indestructable.

I wish my gut could properly process whole milk.

I wish the health insurance people would send me the last piece of paperwork I need to file my taxes.

I wish I could find Marmalade, the orange twenty-pound feral cat, a good home.

I wish that comeuppance would come to those in need of it.

I wish I had the time to get a haircut, so I wouldn't have to see a rough facsimile of the Wild Angels-era Peter Fonda every time I looked in the mirror.

I wish my wishes were as witty and creative as the ones in this excellent track...

King Missile - I Wish (from The Way to Salvation, 1991)

Vacation: Day 4 - With Great Power...

My brother swung by the house on Sunday and dropped off a couple of boxes full of things he thought I might want: My copy of Bully for the PS2 and the Comics Journal Library: The Writers book I lent him, a Deathlok sticker card from 1976, two bags of Science Diet cat food (his cat has diabetes and is on a special diet now), and a bona fide Cosmic Cube he managed to acquire through his work.

While I was well and truly flattered that my younger sibling chose to entrust me with a device capable of reshaping reality at whim, I found myself at a loss regarding what what I exactly wanted to use it for. I pride myself on being something of an underachiever with few ambitions to complicate my easygoing way of life. Plus, I have read enough low-grade sci fi stories, seen enough episodes of The Twilight Zone, and am familiar enough with radical political movements to be wary about the Faustian pitfalls of limitless power.

The last thing I wanted to do was to wish for "world peace" and have a previously undetected asteroid trigger an extinction event, which is usually how this type of thing goes down.

So, with the Cube resting securely on my computer desk, I gazed upon its psychedelic swirl of Kirby crackles and composed a list of things I could possibly wish for. Here's what I came up with:

- a complete run of Captain Marvel Adventures in deluxe hardcover format
- a pristine set of SSP Smash Up Derby cars with all the parts and T-sticks
- a midnight blue 1970 Plymouth Barracuda that was immune to the New England elements
- an addition onto the house (two more bedrooms, a sun room, another full bath, and a computer room)
- that the Democrats would get their shit together and be an effective political force

Armed with this to-do list, I set out to make my (modest) dreams come through. Unfortunately, my brother failed to include a manual, or even a quick start guide for the device, and I was unable to accomplish anything except crash the Cube's OS and force a reboot. (Something about that last item on my list was to blame. Everytime I tried to make it happen, the Cube would lock up for a minute, then display the following message: Intractable Paradox Flaw has been detected in Planar Sector 000x3D3. Would you like to report this error? Irritating, but not surprising in the least...)

Figuring that I should scale back my ambitions until I had a better grasp of the learning curve, I attempted a more modest use of the Cube's abilities:

KRAK-A-BOOM!

"Not bad," indeed, especially considering how hard it has been lately to set up an appointment with my usual hair stylist. The sudden transition from night to day and the transfomation of my Revolutionary Ireland t-shirt into a Polysics one were a little jarring, but minor side effects are to be expected when one dabbles in warping the very fabric of reality. (Maura has grown quite fond of the tribe of telepathic pygmy brontosaurians I accidentally summoned while attempting to will a can of Dr. Pepper from the fridge to the living room endtable...)

Snap! - The Power (from World Power, 1990) - OK, so it's just a polished cube of plexiglass that my brother thought I'd get a kick out of having. The only power it possesses is the ability to inspire today's exceptionally nerdy and goofy post.

The Horrorpops - Kool Flattop (from Hell Yeah!, 2004) - My preference for buzzcut and flattop hairstyles is rooted in both a residual sense of punk rockitude and my traumatic memories of a childhood spent sporting a John Denver 'do.

(Thanks to Dave Lartigue, for providing the Barber of Worlds image, and to Chris Sims, who made with the Kirby crackles and inspiration.)