Happy Lupercalia! Which is So Appropriate Because…

February 14, 2014Tonya Lanthron Leave a comment

Roadkill: It’s What’s for Dinner!

Valentine’s Day as a holiday has always sort of given me the creeps. It’s named after a Christian martyr who according to legend was killed by having his heart cut out. So we make nice little chocolates and cookies with hearts on them to commemorate this why? As far as celebrating holidays that have bizarre origins, it would be more fun to commemorate Bastille Day with scale model guillotines and flying Dennis Rodman ~~doll~~ action figure heads, but I’m weird that way.

The ~~doll~~ action figure came with two heads.

Valentine’s Day wasn’t always Valentine’s day. It actually began as a co-opting of a popular pagan holiday that was celebrated around the middle of February- Lupercalia. Basically it was “The Wolf Festival.” Along with a lot of drinking and fertility rites, that is. What makes this different from The-Game-We-Cannot-Name Sunday or any other redneck beer drinking holiday, except that even rednecks frown upon animal sacrifice? Perhaps the main distinction is that in redneck fornication, procreation generally is not the primary goal. Hence the importance of the Trojan Man.

Because this is all that stands between you and 18+ years of child support.

I don’t believe in romantic love. Not one bit. If Jerry buys me something it’s usually because it’s something he wants. The last thing he bought me was a Stoeger Condor Competition 20 gauge over/under shotgun. It is a sweet shotgun, but I think he enjoys shooting it (and bragging to the guys at the club what a great deal he got on it) more than I do. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate a good shotgun, but it’s not exactly the gift that screams “hot teenage lust.” Not that “hot teenage lust” was ever on my agenda to begin with.

A holiday for dogs, on the other hand, isn’t a bad idea. The interesting thing about a “wolf festival” is that dogs are wolves. Literally.

Grey wolf taxonomic classification: Canis lupus lupus

Domestic dog (all breeds): Canis lupus familiaris

All the same species as the grey wolf. Even the ankle biters.

I’ve also said it before that since dogs are a subspecies of wolf, it’s imperative to respect that. If dogs are improperly treated and/or we humans don’t pay attention to their signals and body language, they can be deadly. Correctly handled and respected, they can become amazing companions, protectors and friends. I trust my dogs more than people, and with good reason.

Not to mention AIDS, chlamydia, genital warts and herpes!

The only thing that disturbs me about those old-time VD warnings is that they always showed women as being carriers of VD. Dudes spread it too. How do you think the women got it?

I always thought Valentine’s Day, with all the insinuation of love being in the air, as a perfect opportunity to warn against Venereal Disease. Here’s a little song from 1969, just in case anyone needs some VD awareness. It’s called “VD is for Everybody” and has a cute little video that goes with it. Just doing my duty to further public health.

Speaking of public health, as I was trolling along, I found another holiday worth celebrating:

I have some questions about Rabies Day.

1. Is this about getting rabies? If so, this could be a very painful and drawn out form of population control. I can think of much easier ways to “cull the herd,” such as leaving the stupid to their own devices, to earn their Darwin Awards without any interference from others.

2. Is this about getting rabies shots and/or preventing rabies? I can stand behind that. I definitely don’t want to get the rabies.

I don’t want to get the cholera either:

“Beware of Drunkenness- nothing is so likely to bring on Disease.” Amazing. Public health authorities knew this back in the 1830’s, that being drunk and dirty could bring on disease. I would like to know where you find hot lime, though.

I think there should be more public campaigns to advocate personal hygiene and cleanliness. It seems that being clean and well groomed is more of an exception than a rule, and then you wonder why you’re surrounded with the hacking, coughing, chronically ill masses.

Of course, as more and more of the people in this country are growing up raised by wolves, what can one expect?

I Don’t Seek Approval, Party Like It’s 1899, and Things that Don’t Suck

January 3, 2013Tonya Lanthron 3 Comments

I usually don’t succumb to the lure of corny party kitsch, but the light up necklace was cute.

I’ve said before I don’t deal much in the currency of optimism, so I don’t see this year being much of an improvement over last. In fact, I started today out rather depressed. Today’s been one of those days where I’m actually trolling for things to cheer me up a bit. I’m actively fighting against the urge to just concede to the Dark Funk and give up. I guess the fact that I’m fighting the temptation to just give into hopelessness is either a good sign, or it’s just an unwillingness to face the reality that my life is pretty much hopeless.

The best way to give myself a reality check, I’ve discovered is to make three lists- Things that Suck that I Can’t Change, Things that Suck that I Can Change, and Things that Don’t Suck.

Things that Suck that I Can’t Change:

Obama. ‘Nuff said.

Personal poverty/ not being financially independent

Being stuck in Ohio, especially in the winter

Health issues* (can mitigate but not eliminate- bad heredity and effects from past diseases/injuries suck)

Jerry – especially when he gets into his “bitch about everything and blame everything on me” mode

Things that Suck that I Can (*theoretically anyway) Change

My own reaction to things that suck

My neglect of friends that I should make an effort to see and communicate with more often

I already turn off the “mainstream” TV news (can’t handle the constant Obama worship) and I already avoid following garbage on TV such as anything Honey Boo Boo or the Kardashians are doing. Admittedly I probably get into true crime shows (TruTV, Discovery ID, etc.) and the Military Channel way too much. I should probably cut down on “World’s Dumbest” and “1000 Ways to Die” and get back into reading a lot more than I do now (although I read a lot by any standard) and maybe get into something a bit more uplifting than unsolved murders, people earning their Darwin Awards, and 20th century history. I mean, how much is left unturned regarding WWII and Adolf Hitler?

Things that Don’t Suck

God

The dogs and cats

The vacuum cleaner when it gets clogged up with Tipsy McNumbNuts’ cigarette pack cellophanes (the irony of which is that it sucks when the vacuum cleaner doesn’t…)

There is no vacuum cleaner made that I don’t have to unclog, tear apart and otherwise rework every time I use the damned thing.

Somehow the deer in the headlights look is a little too typical for me.

Now that I’ve determined that God and the dogs and cats don’t suck, then it should probably follow that I should spend my time in the company of Entities that Don’t Suck as much as I can.

Since for now I do appear to be vertical and sucking up valuable oxygen, let’s be creative and try to enjoy it!

I rather enjoy Victorian ephemera- especially patent medicines and other creepy stuff from that era. I’m surprised anyone survived being treated with the stuff they used as medicine back then, since most of it included either alcohol or opium or various poisons like arsenic, but even today there’s some pretty questionable stuff being used as medicine.

Imagine the same scenario today, only the rednecks have chainsaws, and the little girl has a bottle of moonshine.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

That’s actually one of the few French phrases I remember from high school French class (Why in the hell did I take French? Did I think I was going to be deported to Quebec?) and it means, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Yes, they do, and not always in a good way.

I didn’t think Harry Potter had to worry about VD. Or was that “mugworts?” That sounds like VD anyway. Something like that.

I’m thinking “Bad Hump” would be a better name for a VD cure-all. “Take this stuff for last week’s bad hump.” Or you could just leave it to Dr. Butts:

I want to be cured via the US Postal Service. By Dr. Butts. Yeah.

It’s really kind of scary considering that there really were no cures for VD in Victorian times, and if you got the syph or the clap it could kill you. Sort of like AIDS today, and heaven only knows whatever other deadly STDs are lurking out there that nobody knows about yet. Forced chastity might bite in a lot of ways, but I’m old enough to know that 1.) no man is worth a deadly disease, and 2.) there are such things as “meat substitutes” if you get my drift. The advantage of the “meat substitute” is you don’t have to fix it dinner or unclog its cigarette pack cellophanes from the vacuum cleaner. I only wish I’d figured that out 20 years ago. Just don’t run out of batteries.

Piles: Old time word for “hemorrhoid” – just an FYI

Why is it that back in the day being German cast some sort of legitimacy upon medical quackery? And I find it hard to believe that a medical doctor would spend most of his life on a hemorrhoid cure, but then everyone needs a purpose. I’ve still not figured out exactly why I’m still sucking up valuable oxygen, so I’m the last one to talk.

The 20th century wasn’t much better, but at least you could get a good night’s rest, forget about your hemorrhoids AND forget about your pathetic lack of self-esteem!

Satire is Not a New Art Form, Anti-Smoking, and More Victorian Death Ephemera

July 17, 2012Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

This is as good as anti-smoking propaganda gets- from 1870, no less.

Smoking was just as nasty then, it’s just everyone died from other stuff before they could live long enough for smoking to kill ’em.

The longer I’ve been an ex-smoker I absolutely hate the smell of tobacco smoke. I don’t have much of a sense of smell, and I’m surprised I have that. Even so, the one thing I can always smell is cig smoke, even from far-off, which sucks. Why can’t I smell peonies and lilacs in May, but I can always smell some inconsiderate bastard’s cigarette?

Perhaps it is cosmic payback for back in the day when I used to smoke at my desk- and it was perfectly cool to be inside, at work and hot-boxing smokes at the same time. I’m sure I had to annoy someone with my two-pack-a-day habit of hot boxing 120 menthols down to the filters. My car ended up smelling like a dragon’s colon- because the first thing I would do when I got in the car was light up. The first thing I did when I quit smoking was pay the detail guys- dearly- to get the cig smell out of my Celica. It was nasty, and the inside of the glass on a 2000 Celica is not the easiest in the world to get clean- especially the back glass.

She just might be Hitler in drag, spreading the clap. You never know. Had to throw that in there. Public service announcement from 1943.

Yes, I am still fascinated with Victorian death art which is macabre, and I should find another hobby, but there is so much cool stuff out there – and not always dealing with the subject of death- which is public domain and is a lot better artwork than I could ever come up with. I can scribble with Sharpies and that’s about it. But the Victorians not only did some awesome artwork, there was some pathos there. It was more grandiose than it should have been, and just plain treacly sweet, which made it cool.

You could get in trouble big time for displaying this in a public school. You could offend the Muslims, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the militant atheists, the Hare Krishnas, and who knows who else.

The irony here is that kids can go to public school and have this kind of drivel shoved in their faces and that’s perfectly okee-dokie:

As long as it’s not “Christian” or “Moral” in any kind of way, then we tolerate it, kids!

Then again, “tolerance” (especially as it’s defined in regard to political correctness and its associated idiocy) is the wrong word. Tolerating something doesn’t mean we like it, and it doesn’t mean we encourage it. I used to tolerate long-assed car rides in 70’s era cars (with no A/C, mind you) pinned in the center of the back seat between two sadistic siblings for hundreds of miles. I didn’t like it. I certainly didn’t encourage it. But, being too weak to end up with any other position besides squashed in the middle, I had to tolerate it.

Tolerance- as it’s framed today- is actually appeasement, which is a very different concept. Appeasement is the wussy position. It’s the equivalent of feeding alligators. No matter how much you feed the alligator he will always be hungry. Just see how well it worked for Neville Chamberlain. My oldest sister didn’t stop harassing me and stealing my stuff and kicking my ass just because I sat back and let her keep doing it. She just did it all the more, until one fine day, she took my car without permission and ran it out of gasoline and ran it low on oil. I saw red, and took 17 years of retribution out on her in five minutes. I don’t approve of physical violence, but something had to give somewhere, and I couldn’t keep on appeasing her any more. Appeasement just let her know it was OK to keep on kicking my ass and stealing my stuff. Kicking her ass taught her that it wasn’t OK anymore.

I bet Hitler got a lot of rides back in the day, at least in a figurative way. Carpooling still is a creepy thought though. It would be my luck I’d end up with a serial killer or someone who insists on cranking up the country music. At least Hitler liked opera.

Hitler wasn’t a role model by any means, but he did have a taste for Wagnerian opera, and I can appreciate that. I can’t say I approve of Nazism, genocide, or anti-Semitism, but Wagner did write some cool operas. The only thing difficult about opera is that there aren’t too many operas written in English. If you plan on going to an opera, or even plan on listening to a recording or watching a DVD, if you can get your mitts on a translation of the libretto first it makes a lot more sense.

I found a Victorian death card (these are common, and I will need to troll for some more good ones) that lent itself quite well to shall we say, electronic embellishment:

Should our current president fail to be re-elected, I’ll be printing these out and passing them out like party favors.

Protect Your Unit, A Midsummer’s Nostalgic Musing, and Radioactive Waste!

July 11, 2012Tonya Lanthron 2 Comments

Yes, the world is this effed up. Have the welders come out and weld your AC unit to something- like brackets encased in concrete- to prevent it from being stolen. Air-conditioners get stolen around here for two reasons: 1. (summer) people are hot, and 2. (winter) they contain copper.

I enjoy this sign, even though the thought of anything happening to my AC unit would provoke me to acts of extreme violence. I am glad my AC is in a place in which it is bolted to its base, and you would necessarily encounter dogs to get to it. The girls do not approve of interlopers. Even though I don’t even want to think of some stupid ass ripping off my AC, I still love the double entendre. At first, until I saw the line that said “Stop Air Conditioner Theft,” I thought it was another entreaty from the county health department to encourage the sexually promiscuous to take steps to prevent the spread of venereal diseases.

Yeah, I think even if there were such a thing as Facebook in the 1930’s, you wouldn’t want these test results broadcast on your profile.

I mean, even if your test results indicate you’re syphilis-free, broadcasting that would indicate that you’ve recently put yourself in a position to contract all the other STDs. What about the STDs that might not show up on a test? Or maybe you’ve caught a strange new funky one that is currently unknown to medical science?

This is sort of a Nancy Reagan campaign for preventing VD: Just Say NO!!!!! Especially when you don’t know where she/he/it’s been. Hell, that chick could be a dude- and vice versa.

That actually happened to one of Jerry’s friends. Granted, this guy is the kind of guy who would look better if he shaved his ass and walked backwards, and he has a taste for hanging out in titty bars and swilling rotgut liquor. He was asking for waking up next to something so hideous he’d want to gnaw off his own arm to escape, so such a scenario was just waiting to happen. Even the biological females this guy dated were, shall we say, the kind of girls Freddie Mercury would sing about. He didn’t realize he’d spent the night with a she-male until the next morning. I wonder what the tip off was. Maybe he went to cop a feel and ended up with a fistful of morning wood. Or maybe “she” was taking a whiz standing up. That might have been his sign.

I guess it depends on your perspective.

I don’t have a problem with the transgendered. If you’re a guy and you want to go through life dressed like Joan Crawford, or Oprah, or Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, I could really care less. That’s got to be a really confusing way to go through life, though I will say in defense of trannies, women’s clothes are a lot more interesting.

Tell me RuPaul’s outfit isn’t more festive than a wifebeater t-shirt, distressed jeans, tube socks and Velcro tennis shoes!

Men also have it easier with hair removal. They can pull off the unibrow look, or even a ZZ Top beard, so in theory men don’t have to fart about with hair removal at all. Women, on the other hand, if they are civilized, the only hair permitted to remain is the hair that grows from the scalp, a finely sculptured eyebrow, and eyelashes. The rest of that nasty body hair has to go, at least in my world. Women should not be hairy. Unless they’re Italian. Or bull-dyke lesbians.

Men’s restrooms are a lot less crowded though, and all a guy really has to do in the morning is his 3 esses- shit, shower and shave, though I would fit some dental hygiene of some sort in there.

Dudes, you are lucky in one regard. You can whip out your wang and let it fly anywhere (though I would not recommend the electric fence.) Women can’t do that, unless they like pissing all over their own pants.

I just thought I was riding along listening to Journey, Foreigner, Metallica, Billy Squier, REM, etc. I had no idea. I’ll need to check the car for Hitler before I leave.

Grandma avoided the carpool thing like the plague. She worked at the ordnance factory during the war and it was several miles from where she lived. She managed to get by on her gasoline ration by buying a motorcycle. Since 1940’s cars got maybe- if you were lucky- 12 miles to the gallon, a motorcycle, even those nasty old Harley-Davidsons, would have been more fuel efficient. There wasn’t any room on the back for Hitler, either.

I bet this ride was cold as hell in winter, but Grandma was thrifty, and I’m sure she didn’t want to ride to work with Hitler either.

Grandma never did disclose what she did at the ordnance factory. All she said about it was that they weren’t to discuss what they were doing there with anyone, ever. She had the fear even 60 years later- when all the powers that were are long dead-and she took that knowledge to her grave. I do know that whatever it is she did she was paid well for it, (the workers earned up to $50 per day, depending on where they were assigned, which was equivalent to $623.34 in today’s money) and she received a small pension from the US Army every month until she died. I have to wonder if it was hush money, but she wasn’t telling. The rumor mill- and at least one local author- says that the Scioto Ordnance Plant was involved with the Manhattan Project and with other experimentation with atomic energy. It wouldn’t surprise me because the location was so remote, and at that time only easily accessed by rail.

The creepy part about the ordnance factory is that the county bought part of the land back- and built a school on it. The school got closed down when the kids started getting leukemia and all other weird sorts of cancer. People got paranoid and called in the EPA and they did find all sorts of fun chemicals including radioactive waste, on the school grounds.

Guess what, kids? School is kind of cancelled today. Betcha didn’t know it, but now we have something in common with Chernobyl. We glow in the dark too!

Maybe it is better for me that I went to school with the poor kids in town, even though I got to have the Inner City Behemoth High School Experience without having to end up in Cleveland. The high school I went to was built over an Indian graveyard, and my parents’ house (shit, the entire east side of Marion) is built on a poorly drained swamp, but as far as I know neither place was built on top of radioactive waste.

Another one of those things to be thankful for. I didn’t have to go to the cancer school. I went to the random stabbing and beating school. It works out.

Simply Enchanting, Insect Apocalypse, and Solitude is Elusive

June 12, 2012Tonya Lanthron 1 Comment

When I was a child I was terrified of almost everything- strange people, especially strange men, cops, other kids (because left to their own devices they generally beat the hell out of me,) strange places, being shoved and locked in closets, and I had an obsessive fear of being shot to death through the window, which considering the neighborhood we lived in until I was about 7 years old, wasn’t as irrational as it sounds. People in that little slice of redneck heaven liked to get drunk and shoot off their shotguns in the middle of the night, so who’s to say? But my most overwhelming childhood fear by far was of flying, stinging insects.

I still have a pretty hearty dislike for these bastards.

It didn’t help that my sisters (especially the oldest one, who was sadistic as hell) liked to toss live wasps in my hair. There’s a number of reasons why I wear my hair very short today. It is cooler, easier to color, and much easier to style, granted. It is also easier to keep it insect-free. It was bad enough to have live wasps tossed in one’s hair, but far worse when you have insanely thick hair that goes down to your waist. I still really hate anyone or anything- besides me- touching my hair. I’m weird about any kind of touching anyway. Going to the hairdresser every month or so for a simple cut (I color my hair myself) is a necessary evil, but I can’t say I enjoy it.

Anyway, I found it most distressing to be informed that the insect apocalypse has arrived in what was my grandparents’ house. Dad had rented Grandma’s old house out to a dude for the past two years who paid his rent and lived there without incident, but said dude died about three days after Dad landed in the hospital. The dude’s girlfriend had been keeping a dog there and for some reason the electric had been turned off. So she left the place- rotten food in the fridge, dog shit all over the floors, and unauthorized insect life- just as it was. Poor Spencer went in to examine the disaster and ended up completely covered in flea bites. God only knows, but I’m sure in that neighborhood that the roaches are living high off the hog in there, and possibly bed bugs too. There’s no way in hell I’m going anywhere near that.

Just call the exterminator, or the crime scene clean up people. It’s not worth it to try cleaning up that nightmare without having the Extreme Prejudice to do it.

I still don’t like bugs. Especially ones that leave welts.

So, I hope, when Dad is able to deal with his rentals, that he just gets the exterminator in there and lets them de-bug the place. I do not envy anyone the task of cleaning out a rotten fridge in high summer, but I would want the bugs annihilated first. Again, I think the crime-scene people are the way to go.

Some things may not technically be considered HAZMAT, but should be.

I did attempt- with little success- to get some quality leave-me-alone-dammit time in over the weekend. Mom calling me at 7:30 on Saturday just after I’d fed the dogs, let them out, got them back in, and then got Jerry out the door was a nice, annoying touch, since she usually never gets up any time before 10AM. I was hoping to be left alone Saturday at least between 8AM and noon but that wasn’t happening. It’s my own fault for forgetting to turn the damned phone off. It would be one thing had she been calling me for emergency purposes, but she was pretty much only calling me to bitch at me because Steve-o was rude to her and it was a rant that could have waited until later in the day, or even a rant she could have saved for one of her nosy friends.

To make it worse, when she got off the phone with me, no sooner than I’d hung up, and before I had the sentience of mind to turn the damned thing off, Steve-o called me with his own 37 minute rant on why he’s pissed that I’m not paying for his emergency room visit back in April. I listened to him vent, but pretty much responded with, “It’s called ‘you’re an adult now,’ so now you have to pay for your own shit.” It sucks enough that he’s still on my farking health insurance so my deductible and my weekly premiums are even higher. Needless to say, the cougar nap was out of the question Saturday morning, because I was so pissed by the time I got off the phone with him- after both his and Mom’s tirades- that I figured I might as well screw attempting to nap or read or even to put in a Journey DVD. I decided I might as well work off some of my aggravation and start the day’s business early.

Step one for a nice, solitary day: turn this son of a bitch OFF!!!

Admittedly since Dad’s surgery and stay at the rehab I have been loathe to turn the phone off just in case there is some sort of emergency. The sad thing is that I have no way of knowing the difference between a bullshit/nuisance call and an emergency call. Mom will call me for the most banally stupid things- usually when I am not in a good position to waste an hour listening to her vent about how she’s pissed that the WalMart messed up her scripts, or how much Dad whines about the food at the rehab place. Believe me, she is going to hear his whining about the quality and quantity of food available to him even worse when he gets home. He knows how to cook. I would suggest to him that as part of his rehab and recovery that he get really good at preparing his own meals.

Steve-o will whine and cry to me about virtually everything from how much he can’t stand how hot it gets at work, to how much he doesn’t like having to get up with his daughter in the middle of the night when he’s home, to how torqued he is that he can’t spend every dime of what he earns on playing with his cars. That gets old too. I feel for him as he does have a grueling schedule right now, but he sort of brought a lot of that on himself.

There’s no rest for the wicked. I ended up most of Saturday in WalMart with Mom (I don’t believe in purgatory, but dammit, that comes close- she’s slow and she knows everyone she sees) though I did get about half an hour in the Cougar Pool when I got home. Sunday I ended up going back up there and spending most of the day with Dad at the rehab. I hope he gets out this week, because I am going to stay home and in bed at least for a little while this weekend. Unless I have to bring him food he can actually eat.

I think we all know how to prevent these- but I love antique posters and such. This one is from WWI.

Not very politically correct, but it sure gets the message across.

ELYSIANHUNTER, ALWAYS INCITEFUL:

Because comedy is the flipside of tragedy

Menu

Widgets

Search

VD