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 |  It's who we are. It's what we stare at in the middle of the night. It's a bug zapper. |
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My friends, When we were young and newly hatched—also young and in love—my husband and I lived with our four young children on the Space Coast of Florida. The massive propulsion of rocket and shuttle launches from Cape Kennedy often rocked the windows and doors of our little love cottage. We were always properly respectful and impressed by the reach of mankind’s achievements. It was a point of pride to stop whatever we were doing (dishes, dinner, dancing, sleeping, fist fighting, etc.) to watch the eastern horizon—hands on hearts, tears in eyes—as the United States of America raced into the frontier of space. One deep, dark morning (about 2:00 am) I shook my husband awake to watch yet another triumph of human advancement. “Get up,” I mumbled to Sherwood, “the shuttle’s going up. We gotta’ watch.” Sherwood moaned, “The garbage is out all ready. Let me die.” He did not open his eyes. “Come on. We should watch. Night launches are amazing.” He dragged himself upright and clung to the window ledge behind our bed. We knelt, with our chins braced on the ledge, our bleary eyes fixed on a blazing light in the eastern sky. We watched. The light did not appear to move. We stared some more. The light remain fixed. We struggled to focus. The light blazed away. We waited for the light to fade into the blackness of space. It did not. We watched and watched and watched. The light stubbornly refused to move. At last, collapsing back into my pillow I said, “Honey, go back to sleep.” Sounding confused, miffed, and a little whiney Sherwood asked, “Why?” “Because for the last eight to ten minutes we’ve been staring at our next door neighbor’s bug zapper.” He went back to sleep. And I lived to worship at the altar of space exploration another day. This story pretty much sums up who we are, and how we got this way—excessive staring at bug zappers. And this is my blog, a space-age way of recording one’s thoughts, ideas, embarrassments, and foibles for the entire known world. Once upon a time, I would have made this record on papyrus, rolled it up, stuffed it into a ceramic jar, and asked to have the whole thing buried with me in my sarcophagus. I still might. Disclaimer: Some of the stuff you will read here is true. Some of it is not. Some of it is the result of wishful thinking. Some of it is the result of too much thinking, and some of it is the result of too little thinking. But all of it will be written with joy and laughter, because the alternative is despair and weeping, and isn’t there more than enough of that stuff out there? Thank you for your support, Linda (Zippity the Zapped) Zern |
| "I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in the company of the most expert storytellers for many years. There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind-- the humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story depends for its effect upon the MANNER of the telling; the comic story and the witty story upon the MATTER." Mark Twain (From his essay “How to Write a Story”) Humorous, Comic, Witty Storytelling is just this side of lying--the north side. Humorous storytelling is just this side of lying added to hyperbole mixed with enough wit to make reality look funnier than it actually is. According to Mr. Twain, any little old thing that happens during the day can become a humorous story if told with the correct amount of art and skill. I agree. I find that there isn't much in this world that isn't funny, especially now, what with the roving gangs of I-Want-Something-I-Don’t-Have-But-I’m-Pretty-Sure-That-You-Might-Have-It, So-I’m-Going-To-Fling-Poo-At-You folks. I know I’m laughing when I practice my anti-gang tactics and poo dodging drills. I enjoy humor that involves irony, wit, satire, and the clever use of the word indubitably. My husband, father-in-law, and grandson find the three stooges wildly funny. Thus illustrating the ethereal nature of what qualifies as humorous. Some folks laugh at the sound of a fart produced by an armpit. Some folks laugh at the subtle and not so subtle manipulation used in the advertisements of politicians that have spent sixteen trillion dollars and don’t even have a lousy T-shirt to show for it. Oops. But here we are to tell about it, humorously if possible. It shouldn’t be too hard. After all, we are in the presence of expert storytellers every time we turn on the six o’clock news. ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
| Recently, we developed a bit of a cat problem. We went from no cats to ten cats. It wasn’t on purpose. My theory is that animal lovers think they want animals and then they actually get one or two or ten, and it’s trickier than it looks on TV—what with the fleas, and the claws, and the rabies and all. Too tender hearted to take their unwanted pets to the pound, they bring them to the nice country lady’s house and dump them. They have to pass Osceola Animal Control to do it, and before you can say, “Hello kitty,” there are feral cats living in the chimney and the chicken coop—possibly the dryer vent. Then we have to trap them with hotdogs on strings and take them to the pound. It sucks. I’d like to figure out who the cat dumpers are and leave my horse on their front lawn. My husband got stuck having to take a litter of five identical black kittens into the special bureaucracy invented for the control of other people’s cats. “Please tell me,” the nice bureaucratic lady began, “that you weren’t scratched by any of these darling, perfectly healthy kittens. We can adopt them out right away, unless of course, you were scratched or bitten.” She may have winked. My husband, honest and good and brave, told the truth, of course. “Yes! I got scratched. See?” he displayed a four-inch scratch on his left wrist. “Which one scratched you?” “The black one.” Sherwood can be a real joker sometimes. She groaned. “Oh no, then we have to quarantine them all for ten days.” A bright, shiny light glittered in her bureaucratic eye. “Let’s do this. Let’s say that the one that scratched you got away. Now then, did any of these cats scratch or bite you?” “Yes,” Sherwood said. “See?” He showed her his wrist again. “No. No. No. Okay, one more time. Did any of these perfectly healthy cats, the ones that didn’t run away, unlike the one that scratched you, did any of these cats scratch or bite you.” She winked again broadly, hopefully. This wink did it. He caught on. “No, I put gloves on after the,” he said, squashing one eye closed back to her, “black one that scratched me ran away.” She made him fill out a paper about the fabricated, escaped black cat. The health department sent my husband a letter encouraging him to speak with his doctor about the possibility that he might now have rabies. But Sherwood knew that it was really fictional rabies from an invisible black cat, so we weren’t too worried. Except to say, that this new fangled desire for more governmental rules, regulations, bureaucracies, and departments is danged confusing. I’m not sure that we’re slick enough to take proper advantage of the system or the story telling involved. Linda (Scat) Zern |
| “Hey! I just noticed how freckly you are,” my husband said. He sounded shocked. We’ve been married for thirty-four years. I looked at him, stunned. “Who have you been living with for more than three decades?” I’m so freckly that I could be a one of those models in the clothing ads where they feature a super freckly human as if to say, “See how beautiful even the genetic weirdos are?” Or as my six-year old grandson said, “YaYa you have a lot of spots.” “It’s camouflage for when I hide in the tall grass,” I said. “In a trillion, million years everyone will have spots like me.” “And you’re really hairy.” “Go away,” I told him. As a writer, I find the contrast between my fifty-year old husband’s observational skills and my six-year old grandson’s abilities, fascinating. What’s the point of having eyes if you don’t use them? Thirty years living with the first guy and he never noticed I was half Irish and half cheetah? If my husband is evolving, it’s to become an eyeless lemur with huge hands. I don’t want to talk about why he’ll have huge hands. Learning to see with better eyes is a skill that I’m not sure can be taught anymore, especially now that the angry birds are distracting the lemur people, but Conner gives me hope. His eyes work just fine. It’s his mouth that gives him trouble. So when I’m watching for hair and spots and trying to find fresh ways to depict the hairy spot people as clearly and as crisply as I’d like to be able to describe a wart on a backside, I keep my mouth shut. And I do my best to say it with my keyboard. I’m trying to learn to see with better eyes. I figure, if I work at it really hard I might get as good at it as a six-year old. “YaYa, why do you have a black booby bra?” “Because it makes me invisible to zombies.” Conner nodded and like a heat seeking missile went in search of his next fascinating, albeit embarrassing discovery. Linda (Four Eyes) Zern |
| "YaYa, you have a lot of spots and you're hairy," said six-year old Conner. I sighed. I always worry when Conner looks my way. He's that kid in the family; you the know the one. The one that sees every wart, pimple, and flaw, and then has to comment. When he was four-years old he told his Sunday School teacher, "Sista 'Tassidy, you have big boobies." Sister Cassidy, a good friend of mine, later told me that she was so shocked that all she could think of to say was, "Why, thank you Conner." Conner has an excellent eye. When he looks he sees. As a humor writer, I try to keep his example in mind. The world is a funny, conglomeration of observable incongruities, inconsistencies, hypocrisies, and hairy spots. All you have to do is look to see, like Conner. Just don't point, when you notice that the lady has a mustache. That was the instruction that Conner's dad gave him, "It's not nice to point and say that a lady has a mustache." Conner replied, "I wasn't pointing." |
| I love Facebook posts, and I love Facebook responses. Responses are illuminating. I have learned more about "how the world wags and who wags it" from Facebook than any face to face conversation. People are honest on Facebook, shockingly so. It's refreshing and disheartening. They post pictures of themselves they'd be embarrassed to have their Auntie Nans see. It's like people picking their noses in their cars. I want to yell, "We can see you!" Come be my friend on Facebook. I'll peek at yours, if you peek at mine. I've never blocked or dropped anyone. It's true that I've been blocked and dropped, more than once, but that's mostly by family. |
| There are two problems with being a writer in the 21st century. One is the amount of time a writer has to sit on her butt. It's butt-numbing. The second is the multi-media aspect of the job, trying to figure out how to yelp loud enough to be heard above a virtual sea of yelping writers. It's mind numbing all the yelping one has to do, but if you believe in the stories you have to tell . . . well, what's a little yelping while sitting? This is me, inviting you to laugh with me, at me, around me, and about me--also mine. For a convenient take along pack of Zippityzern see my Ebook collection on Smashwords. It's the blue book. Collect all the colors. ZippityZern's Uncommon Nonsense - A Declaration by Linda L. Zern Price: Free! 5320 words. Published on July 6, 2012. Fiction. In book two of Linda L. Zern's series "ZippityZern's Uncommon Nonsense" better known as "the Blue Book," the author continues to observe, deduce, and comment on life and living. Topics include the proper way to freak out over discovering porn in a teenage boy's room, teaching the young and impressionable the fine art of toilet plunging, and the proper use of paranoia as a parenting tool. |
| “Going down the Amazon?” a complete stranger commenting on one of my more spectacular hauls of groceries from our local mega-mart. It wasn’t a real question. Nothing invites intrusive, judgmental comments like a shopping cart full of groceries. It’s public. It’s visible. It’s like a neon sign on malfunctioning wheels for letting the neighbors know that someone at your house has a bladder control problem or various kinds of itches. Perfect strangers think nothing of peering into a private, personal shopping cart and remarking on a load of fire ant killer and lemonade and saying, “Someone’s got a lot of work to do.” “Or, I’m planning to kill my husband,” I responded. The conversation waned at that point. Buying machetes present their own special challenge. Over the years, I’ve developed strategies for trying to keep my personal grocery buying habits private and, let’s not forget, personal. When buying large quantities of anything that you’d rather not have comments on, oh say like—lice shampoo—first, place a snazzy little storage ottoman (aisle eleven, next to the candle aisle, $19.99) in your shopping cart and remove the lid. Then, dart down the shampoo aisle, scraping bottles of lice shampoo into the open ottoman. Replace ottoman lid. Continue shopping. The down side is that you have to buy a lot of storage ottomans for twenty bucks a pop. The up side is that you’ll have a ton of handy, functional storage ottomans all over the house, and you’ll be able to treat the lice epidemic without public outcry or verbal flogging. Recently, I wrestled my way out of our local mega-mart behind a heap of groceries hidden inside storage ottomans. The heap was large enough to supply an expedition going down the Amazon. I am a smallish person. I tend to procrastinate shopping. Therefore, when I say “heap of groceries” I mean a leaning tower of milk, bread, eggs, ant killer, and machetes. Apparently, I resemble a fire ant carrying a shopping cart. Folks find the sight amusing. They often comment. A gallon of milk rolled out from under the cart across the floor. “Hey, lady, you got that shopping cart under control?” A young man said. He was standing near the icemaker admiring his big arm muscles. I blew a strand of hair out of my sweaty, straining face and said, “We’d better hope so, or we are all dead men.” I kept pushing, wishing I knew how to make my own printer ink, paper, crab salad, and machetes at home. “Besides,” I muttered under my breath, “it’s not a shopping cart in the South; it’s a buggy. It’s a buggy.” Comment on that. Linda (Shop Much?) Zern |
| The earth turns. The world goes round and round. Spring follows winter follows fall trails summer. Life is a spinning wheel, inside a circle of stars, revolving on a hula-hoop of hormonal booger dirt. Sorry. It’s day thirteen. Bad. Angry. Phrase. Day. I know I don’t write about being menopausal much and that a few readers might find this surprising, but honestly there are some subjects that even I don’t find funny: bubonic plague, Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, finger nails, and menopause. Then I realized that my “change of life” could be documented on a merry-go-round pie chart of hormonal predictability, and while I haven’t felt this out of control since I was a hysterical thirteen-year old, it is all kind of silly in a tragic, life cycle kind of way. I’m just not sure that it’s funny. Then again, fifty percent of the time I’m not sure that I don’t have the Ebola virus, one hundred percent of time, which is a not and a don’t and that equals a double negative. Get it? Here are the facts on my monthly, revolving, day-by-day “change of life” spin cycle. Days 1 through 3: For three days a month, I feel as if I’m breathing liquid cement, and it’s hard to drag my lungs around, also my arms, legs, and hair. I’m really tired. The Three Days After That (Days 4, 5, 6) or the Mobster Mentality Days: I feel like I want to encase people in cement and throw them into a deep ditch full of swampy water. I begin to make a list of likely candidates. By day six, I find that I have run out of time and homicidal desire. Day 7: There’s a spring in my step, a glow to my skin, and no bloating. I want to live long enough to be interviewed by someone famous. Days 8 through 11: I congratulate myself on not being a fifty-three year old pregnant person. Day 12: My skin dries up. My hair thins. Wrinkles grow more pronounced. I get pimples. What the fudge sickle? A Vague Number of Days After That, Ranging From A Single Day to Most Days: Wandering around my home, I shuffle about ranting about the deplorable state of everything from the burning in my finger bones to the potential collapse of the Greek drachma. Or as my granddaughter asked, “Why you talk yourself all time, YaYa?” “Because, dear,” I tell her. “I’m the only one who’ll listen to me anymore. Besides, I’ve become the smartest person I know. Let’s get ice cream.” Day (I lost track): Be afraid. Be very afraid. There’s a bright light but I don’t go near it. I feel too mean. The light is all shimmery and shivery. The light is quite possibly afraid of me. Day 28: On my knees, I raise my clenched knobby knuckles to the sky and shout, “As God is my witness, this sucks.” Rinse and Repeat. I know in my heart that I’m not supposed to be at the mercy of my body chemicals. I. Know. That. In addition, highly educated tenured college professors have informed me that there is no real difference between the sexes. That male and female exist only in our societal heads. That we are simply the result of our “conditioning” or is it conditioner? When I hear troubling theories like that, I look down at my too-tender-to-touch mammary glands, the ones that dangle off the front of my unisex chest on day thirty of my “change of life” pie chart, and I whisper, “Who told you that you were girl boobs?” Linda (Dizzy Dame) Zern |
| I’m not getting better with age. I’m just older, and I’m tired. I’m tired of not being able to find the toilet bowl plunger. The plunger is supposed to be under the sink, tucked in the back of the cabinet where the grandbabies can’t “discover” it, drag it out, and suck on it. That’s where it’s supposed to be. I’m fifty plus years old, and I’ve had a few years to work out a system so that I know where that grubby plunger is supposed to be. I KNOW WHERE THE PLUNGER IS SUPPOSED TO BE . . . So that when the plunger is not where it is supposed to be and I’m left standing, starring into the rising tide of toilet bowl heartbreak I have nothing left to give in the way of patience and tolerance and . . . did I mention patience? Nothing. Left. To. Give. All I can hear is fifty plus years of my own voice, echoing down the corridors of time, saying, “Hey who took the plunger? I need it now. Hurry! I mean it. Dark water rising! Arrrrgh!” And I’m sick of it. And I’m old. And I’m not more patient. And I’m over it. I’m over the thoughtlessness of people who take other people’s stuff and don’t put it back where they found it: scissors, plungers, hammers, remotes, the twenty bucks in my wallet, car keys, cars, etc. I’m so over it that I actually heard myself screaming at the top of my lungs today, “Whoever took the toilet bowl plunger had better bring it back or I’ll cut ‘em. I’ll cut ‘em with a knife. I swear it.” This is not me getting better with age. This is me acting like a candidate for early retirement. There’s a lot about getting older that is butterfly beautiful and lovely and of good report, and there’s a lot about getting older that looks and smells like a clogged toilet when some dumb bunny has run off with your plunger. The trick is to try not to let stuff pile up so that you need a plunger in the first place or you may find yourself saying stuff like, “The next person who wears my garden boots and leaves them half full of sand isn’t going to need his or her feet—ever again.” Can you imagine being as old as that old guy in the Bible? Methuseleh was supposed to be 969 years old. Nine hundred and sixty nine years of trying to get people to put the goats back where they found them. Yuck. Linda (Live Long and Suffer) Zern |
| My husband can make numbers dance. It’s a computer analyst thing. Numbers take the place of words in my husband’s binary mind. What you can’t say with a 0 or a 1 isn’t worth saying. I, on the other hand, love the wordy majiggles, sometimes making up new twinkle words right on the spot. Words are magic. In my mind, words are like pieces of a glorious puzzle that fit together in endless combinations to form blazing snapshots framed in braided twists of golden licorice. You see the basic problem. I spend my days tapping away at letters, blending them into words—also mowing, chopping, burning, edging, mucking, grooming, raking, planting, growing, dragging, and nailing, but that’s a subject for another day. My husband reads what I write and says, “Good.” He says it always and forever, because the word “good” is his describing word of choice. No matter what I write, how much or how little, how sad or how happy, he will call it good. No matter how much he likes a piece or how moved he is by it, or how hard it’s made him laugh, he has one and only one word to bestow on it. GOOD. Not wonderful. Not amazing. Not wham bam thank you Sam. Just good. I can’t decide if a one or a zero represents the word good in his binary brain bucket. My latest project is a novella (a short, sweet novel) set in rural Florida in the mid ‘60’s called Mooncalf. It’s a very serious, literary work requiring a lifetime’s worth of blood and bone. He read Mooncalf. When he finished reading, he paused, pondered, and said, “This is terrific.” I just may have a Pulitzer Prize winner on my hands. To illustrate what I’m up against, I’ve compiled a Sherwood Zern compliment lexicon: It’s good. (Said in a neutral tone) 1. I know you were making sounds resembling our mother tongue, but I wasn’t listening so I’ll play it safe. 2. What? That’s good. (Said with no discernable intonation) 1. Why do you insist on reading this stuff to me when you know I prefer to read it myself. 2. No, really, I’m listening. Good! Of course, I mean it. (Said in a clipped, sharp way) 1. I’m on a conference call and I forgot to mute it. Well, isn’t that good. (Repeated) 1. What’s for dinner? 2. Did you take my power cord? 3. When are you going to get a job? That’s dang fine good. (Eyes glued to computer monitor) 1. I didn’t understand a word you just read; it must be stellar. And then . . . Linda, this is really terrific. (With eye contact and vocal inflection) 1. I love you, babe. Hang in there. 2. Dr. Suess received twenty-seven rejections before he was published. I believe in you. 3. You misspelled cooties on page eighty-three. So back to page eighty-three I go, working like the devil to deserve such high and mighty praise from the king of the binary people. Linda (Good, Better, Best) Zern |
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