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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 cannot run for public office—ever. There’s a potential YouTube video. It won’t be flattering. Somewhere in the bowels of our local box store lurks a security video where I can be seen devolving into the circling, snarling matriarch of a hyena pack. Because . . .while trying to do the right thing and return my buggy to the buggy corral, I may or may not have rolled that buggy in front of a little old lady who resembled a wizened Mother Goose. Note: Buggy is southern for shopping cart. Mother Goose is southern for an elderly woman pushing a mean buggy. Let the record show that Mother Goose was completely out of sync, going in the down, and up the out. She’s lucky she wasn’t buggy crushed. Forced to walk three—possibly four—steps out of her way, she blamed me. “People are so rude these days. You pulled right out in front of me,” she said. For a disorienting minute, I thought I might have been rolling down the interstate in my convertible buggy. It’s important to note that ninety-nine percent of the time in these confrontational shopping buggy-parking situations, I generally say something like, “Sorry. You are so right; rude isn’t a big enough four-letter word for what I am.” Then I grovel. This time, for reasons only my hormone soaked reptilian brain might fathom, I did not grovel. I bristled. Seizing on the driving/parking metaphor, I hiked up my arthritic right hip, slapped the back (buttocks) portion, and while hopping about on one foot, chanted, “Next time signal! Put your blinker on, put your blinker on, put . . .” Then it got really weird. Mother Goose hiked up her more arthritic hip, slapped her buttocks region, and shuffle-shuffle-hopping, shot back, “YOU! Put your blinker on, put your blinker on . . .” Circling each other while slapping, chanting and shuffle hopping, we were like two woozy dogs with six legs between us. Hackles were visible and raised. My opponent had age and experience on her side, however, and eventually, I retreated to the neutral territory of the restroom, where I splashed water on my face and checked for multiple personalities. It’s possible that the bad me frightened a security guard and confused some cashiers. Later, I realized that a security camera had recorded the entire incident. That out there in cyber-verse-land exists a video of me slapping my butt and insulting a nine hundred-year old, Mother Goose look alike. That’s why I can never run for public office. There’s a video. Just my luck, it’s not a sex video; those things never seem to be a problem for anyone. |
| I try not to wear maxi skirts; they tend to make me look like I belong to a cult of hippy dwarfs. No disrespect to hippies or Snow White’s buds or cults. Long skirts also tend to wrap around my ankles, hooking my heels in an aggressive and hostile manner. Long skirts are just this side of death traps, in my opinion. So if you see me wandering about in a long, heel-hooking skirt, it’s because I’m hiding something. Two weeks ago, last Sunday I had to wear a maxi skirt to church. I was hiding fire ant pus bites that covered my leg flesh from my ankles to my knees. Ant pus bites that I received while standing in a ditch next to our street, Kissimmee Park Road. I was standing in the ditch putting a halter on Rosie the Pony that was having a high old time snacking on the bucket of feed I use to trap equine jail breakers. A bucket of feed that I had set in an enormous fire ant hill, because I was distracted by the wailing of the fire engine that went roaring down our country lane at the exact time of Rosie the Pony’s escape attempt. A fire ant hill that poured forth enough fire breathing ants to fill the bucket and leap onto Rosie the Pony’s nose and cause her to snort fire ant laden nostril snot onto my person, while their angry ant co-drones raced up my shins to gnaw on my age spots. Age spots that were soon covered with fire ant pus bites, while Sarah, my daughter-in-law, directed traffic: the fire engine, assorted pickup trucks, the neighbor—come to help, possibly a goat pulling a cart. Sarah, my daughter-in-law, who hearing my howling yelps for assistance grabbed the bucket filled with fire ants and handed it to Emma, the granddaughter, who thought that Rosie the Pony had been trotting over to say, “Hi, Emma,” when Emma was holding the front gate open for the family van. Rosie the Pony who had not been trotting over to say, “Hi, Emma,” but to say, more along the lines of, “Wow, you people are morons,” as she bolted for the sweet, sweet grass of the ditch. Sweet, sweet grass that hid a gigantic fire ant hill filled to the brim with fire ant pus makers, whose attack required me to have to wear a frumpy skirt to church. Or as Emma wailed, “Hey, Mom, this bucket is full of fire ants.” Country Living Lessons Learned: **Ponies trotting toward an open gate may have ulterior motives. **The grass is always greener in the ditch. **Maxi skirts make good cloaking devices in a pinch. Linda (Beware Attack Ants) Zern |
| I evolved sarcasm as a protection, the way roses evolved thorns and for basically the same reason—to keep from being devoured by goats. As a kid, I was puny. I was slow. I was knobby. I never did climb that dopey rope. I got sick of being bitten by my kid brother, made fun of by my elementary school peers, and belittled by the marauders of Rose Marie Drive, also known as the neighbor’s kids. “Those are some big-time words coming out of your knobby mouth, puny, little girl.” When I failed to grow a spiked dinosaur tail so that I could crush human bones, I honed the venom of the cutting remark. Turns out, I had a knack. I raised sarcasm to a high and lofty weapon. What I lacked in brawn, I made up for in perfectly delivered snidery. My brother later complained that I always “made him feel stupid.” My mother complained that it wasn’t what I said but “how I said it” that made it difficult to be related to me. My sister cried. A lot. But that could have been baby-of-the-family issues. Eventually, I rendered several people unconscious with the savage efficiency of my sarcasm. “Back away, little man, or I will kill you, cook you, eat you, and pick my teeth with your bones.” And they bought it. It’s all in the delivery: tone, inflection, facial ticks, sneering lip curl, dismissive eyebrow flip. Which makes this social media/facebooking experience beyond frustrating, but we prone-to-evolving creatures must learn to adapt or die, mustn’t we? Those little faces made out of punctuation marks, while darling, seem so inadequate when trying to convey the depth of my _________________(fill in the blank.) Extra points awarded for originality and the ability to guess what I’m thinking at this very second in time (i.e. mind reading.) I’m working on a Snark-Code to go with the one emoticon I feel confident typing. I might write something like: That idea of yours is close to being what we, in the south, like to call ‘mealy-mouthed.’ Followed by: (Imagine me saying this while using a comical southern accent and an adorable wink, thus diluting the sharpness of the insult.) Or . . . Yes, absolutely, everyone is entitled to ride a unicorn to pick up their happy cash from the big money dump truck of joy provided by all the wickedly rich, rich, rich people in Hollywood and Martha’s Vineyard. (Please envision me rolling my eyes so hard up in my head that I go blind.) And finally . . . Wow! (When you hear me saying this single word in your head, draw it way, way out and turn it into a ten or eleven syllables that can mean either cool, fool, yikes, you cannot possible think that’s good/smart/funny/truthful!) So be warned. I have thorns. But it’s not all my fault that I’m sharp-thorned harpy, and I’m not really bad. I evolved this way. Linda (Spike-Tail) Zern |
| My Regular, Annual, Semi-Official Ghost Written Disclaimer My name is from the 1950’s. My age spots are from the wear-no-sunscreen ‘60s. My stretch marks are from the baby making ‘80s and my attitude is the culmination of fifty-three years of paying attention to the big words coming out of the mouths of politicians, professors, popcorn venders, and pompous pontificators that said one thing, did another, and did not or do not deserve a second chance. Lovely rhetoric is lovely, but I’m more into stone, cold results. Color me skeptical. I was blogging before it was called blogging. It was called chatting over the back fence. I’ve been chatting over the back fence, once a week, for over thirteen years. Here’s stuff that I’ve figured out—also my philosophy: Sorting the silverware into individual slots for the convenience of fork users is weird. Throw it all in a drawer and let the moochers sort it out for themselves. Folding sheets into tiny, tidy squares is a lot of effort for not much. Lump the silly things up and shove them in a laundry basket. All the knobs on your kitchen cabinets DO NOT HAVE TO MATCH! I know. I know; radical, revolutionary talk fated to drive my son-in-law mad. “They” are the worst possible source of information. “They” are probably the idiots that came up with the matching kitchen cabinet knob rule. Chocolate covered raisins are the smartest food on earth. Babylon is alive and well and trying to sell you something on Amazon—matching kitchen cabinet knobs. Anarchy is a two-year old on a binky binge with a diaper full of pucky. Anarchy is for the birds. No. Even birds have more self-discipline than those self-proclaimed anarchists, crying for their binkies and flinging their own poo. Being a selfish twit (i.e. wicked) makes you insecure and insecurity makes you fearful and being fearful makes you mean and mean people are selfish twits. Knock it off (i.e. repent). The best cure for insult or reproach is to be able to 1) laugh at yourself 2) laugh at the people who make fun of your mismatched kitchen knobs and libertarian values 3) recognize “them” for the “they” that “they” be and 4) keep your knives sharp and your wit sharper. Note: The management is not responsible for the opinions expressed in this blog by Linda L. Zern with her 1950’s name and her stretch marks, because the management is probably obsessing over getting the sheets folded into squares the size of postage stamps. Silly management. Lin(duh) Zern (circa 1958) |
| I go to college. I am a student of higher education. I have a book bag from Gap and a map of my college campus, and for seventy dollars per year they let me park in the parking garage. I pay, no—strike that—my husband pays an exorbitant amount of money for me to go to a private college with an excellent reputation and a parking garage. When I say exorbitant I mean stupid. My husband forks over stupid amounts of money for my education. Why? Because I sleep with him. Oh, you mean—me. Why do I go to college? I go to college because when I’m done I’ll be able to get a good job working for an evil corporation that will suck my life’s blood out of me like a giant tick, thus turning me into an empty, fluttering sack of desiccated skin stuff, while that very corporation crushes the “average American” under its evil feet like Godzilla stomping Tokyo. I am an English major. Can you tell? And thus we come to the crux of the higher education dilemma. Parents (or in my case, a sugar daddy) spend stupid amounts of money so that students of higher education can go to school where they are told, often and emphatically by famous authors who never GIVE their books away but always take CHECKS OR CASH for their books, that making stupid amounts of money is both greedy and the moral equivalent of beating up five-year olds for their Halloween candy. These same students are then encouraged to graduate, with honors, so they can make stupid amounts of money, which is cool as long as said student donates stupid amounts of that greed money back to their colleges. It’s called the alumni association. Higher education is like one of those Chinese thumb traps, where you stick your thumbs in a tube of cheap, brightly colored paper and pull. The harder you pull, the higher your tuition will go. I’ve fooled everyone and outsmarted the evil Tokyo stomping corporations. I never plan to graduate or get a “real” job. For thirty years, I’ve listened to folks whine about: their rotten bosses, their rotten jobs, their mind numbing work related responsibilities, their crap salaries, their crap retirement, their idiotic co-workers, and lest we forget—the crap evil corporations which crush us all by importing Chinese thumb traps from China, forcing us to buy them with their clever marketing ploys which they learned how to do by hiring COLLEGE GRADUATES WITH DEGREES IN MARKETING. End the proliferation of evil corporations now! Don’t go to college! Be a stay at home mom and paint the baseboards! Because that’s as NON-PROFIT as it gets. Bang a drum in a public park and demand to be paid the same amount of money as, oh let’s go crazy here and say, a lawyer. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, as a student of higher education, it’s that societies can never have too many lawyers or too many drum bangers . . . . . . or kiosks selling Chinese thumb traps imported from China where they shoot the factory manager when the Ministry of Embarrassment finds out he’s been using cheap, lead based inks and dyes to cut corners and pocket the difference. Linda (Will Work for Free) Zern |
| It’s a recurring criticism of college life and academia that they don’t represent “real life.” It’s true. They don’t. The mental ballet of the Socratic method of question and answer, the delicate give and take of knowledge given and received, and the glittering fire of minds forever changed are rarely experienced outside the college classroom . . . at . . . oh say, Target. College is a rare and civilized moment in life, but it is not “real life.” It is a utopian fantasy of what we might wish life could be, might be, if only we didn’t have to get into a sub-compact with bad catalytic converters, pull onto I-4, and commute—anywhere, ever. However, in defense of the academic experience, I am prepared to discuss in depth what I believe is a little known course of study in “real life” preparation available on your college campus. It’s called Parking Lot, A “Real Life” Prep Course—110. Parking Lot, A “Real Life” Prep Course is a comprehensive course of study designed to prepare a student for every major “real life” scenario. It’s all out there, in the parking lot—injustice, competition, inequities between socio-economic classes, and of course, hit and run crime. The parking lot at your college campus is a Petri dish of “real life,” and before a student cracks the first classroom door they are out there in the parking lot exploring, experimenting, navigating—getting tickets. “Real life” is full of bloody, medieval competition—also hemlock. Competition, defined by the big red dictionary on my desk, is a “striving or vying with another or others for profit, prize, position, or the necessities of life; rivalry.” The necessities of life include: oxygen, water, ketchup, mustard and a decent parking space within a two-mile radius of Orlando Hall. Therefore, vying for a parking space is like a daily pop quiz in “real life.” Out there in the parking lot, cars circle like a swirling flock of vultures waiting for the subtle signs of a retreating vehicle—the glint of a taillight, the subtle shift of a bumper, the erupting blare of thumping music from someone’s trunk, and it’s game on. Seven drivers converge on a single empty space—striving, vying—flipping each other off. There’s less profanity in a Tarentino film. I can think of few other courses of study that prepare today’s college student for the “real life” Machiavellian maneuvering of the corporate boardroom or the gossipy cesspool of the water cooler than the competition for an exceptional parking space at Rollins College. It’s a student’s best way to get ready for “real.” Linda (Put Your Blinker On) Zern |
| I walked onto our back porch, caught a whiff of what surely had to be a molting skunk, and started searching for the offending stink monster. But something about the smell was strangely familiar, a smell that quite possibly qualified in certain states as a toxic chemical spill under EPA regulations. That was no skunk smell. That was an odor that came into your nose but got trapped in your throat, forming a solid lump of stench next to your left tonsil. It was the smell of musk, rut, and lust. It was the smell of the goat next door, a Nubian buck goat with a head like a cinder block and a "come hither" look in his eye, and it was rank. I could hardly complain, however, because I enjoy comic relief the way some people enjoy the smell of an aftershave called, "Sex Panther." The goat fell in love with a donkey. The donkey objected violently to the prospect of being the object of buck lov'en. Mr. Medina, my neighbor, objected to the donkey trying to bite the head off of the goat. Mr. Medina chased the goat, who chased the donkey, who ran for its sexual purity. I laughed. Then I coughed. Then I choked. Because there is nothing in this world, like the smell of a big goat in big love. Linda (Hold Your Breath) Zern |
| 1 In the year in which common courtesy didst die and the people didst make much of their “Angry Birds” and their “Farm-Villes” saying, “Just a minute whilst I dost harvest my pumpkins,” I didst continue the record of my people. 2 And in that selfsame year, I didst curse the harvesting of the imaginary pumpkins saying, “All ye that do virtually that which they do not care to do physically needs must repent or be smitten by the wrath of mine tongue.” 3 And they didst reject all mine words, being much taken with their Apps, and while they were thus engaged with their faux pumpkin growing, I didst watch and make note of all that didst happen. 4 Now the year of 2011 was on this wise: Sherwood the Mighty Hunter didst go forth to Detroit to collect the shekels that were his due, both for the support of his tribe and the blessing of others. And he didst consider himself rich both in flocks and fields and children and grandchildren. And he didst prosper in the land of Saint Cloud, wishing neither to covet or be coveted upon. 5 And I, even the Ya Ya, didst continue in that which I did begin, saying, Yea have I not come to be that which all doth desire to be in our land? Both unemployed and fed like unto Elijah the Tishbite when he wast fed by the ravens that were sent forth by the hand of God? And I doth make an answer—Yea, yea, I sayeth, I am most blessed in that I am fed by ravens—also Sherwood the Mighty Hunter, and all mine needs met by both he, who is mine husband, and by UPS. 6 And the elder son of our tribe didst return once more from the land of conflict and didst set up camp in the lands round about and didst make his home at Fort Campbell. There he didst work most earnestly both protecting the Colonel and overseeing the warriors and finding out that which is to be found out concerning weapons of war. And in all this didst he pray most earnestly for peace in the lands round about. 7 And Heather, Maren, and Adam (with their husbands and wife) didst bring forth much children and didst spend their days commencing the work of the Lord, even the work of Eternal Life, in that they did teacheth to their children that which the world could not understandeth, no, nor comprehendeth! And they did live after the manner of happiness, 8 Excepting when the parents were harvesting of their crops on Farm-Ville. Then they did ignoreth the rising generation, excepting to say, “Why doth that kid haveth no pants on?” 9 And all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Ya Ya when she sayeth, “Cometh on over. There are leftovers yet to eat.” 10 And they didst eat of the fat of the land and laughed oft and didst watch the Heavens diligently for the signs of that great and terrible day which was to come when all their children, yea all, were trained, yea trained to go in the potty and not behindeth a tree, in their pants, or on the dog. 11 And I maketh an end. May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob bless thee and keep thee in the lands of thy own inheritance this Christmas season and in all seasons of the years, excepting if this year which is to come, even 2012, be the last year then may the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob buildeth thee a bunker, well stocked with Vienna sausage. Amen. |
| Last year I did not decorate for Christmas. I don’t know; I just wasn’t feeling it. Aric was in Afghanistan. The housing market was in the local landfill. Everyone who had decided to have only one or two kids so that they could “spoil them” had succeeded. Instead of decorating, I started my spring cleaning—in December. And I heard about the decoration desert at YaYa’s all year long. This year I decorated. For two days I unpacked, hung, strung, pushed, moved, arranged, draped, rearranged, assembled, located, dusted, displayed, climbed, and hung. (Oh wait, I already said hung; too bad, I’m leaving it. It’s a double hung kind of story.) Last night in glittering triumph, I prepared to hang the last ornament on the last branch of the most beautiful Christmas tree I have ever personally overseen. In exhausted triumph, I hung that last gold whatever on the tree, stepped back to admire my work, and—the whole silver and gold vision toppled straight over on top of me—shattering about half of my most cherished holiday ornaments and crushing me to death. In fact, I’m sending this to you from the spirit world. It’s not so bad here. Lots of time. Lots of interesting folks to chat with. In fact, I see Charles Dickens right over there. I think I’m going to go over and ask him a couple of questions about the inspiration for his Christmas story. Shalom from the other side. Linda (Holly Jolly) Zern |
| Warning: Some of the observations in this essay may appear politically incorrect, boorish, or just plain snobby. My advice is to “roll with it” and take comfort in the knowledge that your judgmental attitude toward my judgmental attitude is superior in every way. I am a weirdo magnet. And when I say “weirdo” I mean I attract people who are loonies, goonies, and possibly sand people. These are folks who stray from the norms of normalcy in ways that are hard to predict under normal circumstances and often involve the wearing of tinfoil pantaloons. My husband, Sherwood (a man with a somewhat unusual name) once tried to help me find the cause of my weirdo magnetism. “It’s because you make eye contact, listen to what the sand people have to say, and treat them like regular people.” “Oh, you mean I’m kind.” “Exactly! Knock it off.” I try. I really do. But the tinfoil pantaloon people take me by surprise, often at WalMart. Like Saturday, when the world’s oldest living hippy spotted me, sized me up, and cut me out of the herd. It’s possible that his grizzled ponytail was pulled a bit tight. From under a moustache the color of old lemonade, he informed me that he enjoyed picking up the clothes that shoppers carelessly threw on the ground in the children’s department at our local WalMart. “Oh no. I hope it wasn’t me,” I said, feeling my hands clench reflexively around the purple velour hoodie I was holding—sized twelve months. He continued, “But my back hurts now, and I’m done picking up clothes.” His shopping cart effectively cut me off from the shoe department, the dairy section, and electronics—also freedom. “Would you like to know something?” Looking the grizzled hippy man straight in the eye, I said, “Of course.” I can’t help it. I’m the curious sort. He gestured vaguely toward the baby seat of his shopping cart. “I’m getting a little something for myself for Christmas.” I can’t help it. I’m a visual person. I did look. Risking a quick glance, I saw that he had two packages of women’s underwear in his cart. White. Polyester. Not thongs. Hopefully. I looked away as quickly as my eyeballs could swivel in my eye sockets. With a flourish and a wink, he said, “I’ve got two honeys, but they’re different sizes; I’d better not get the panties mixed up. Hee, hee, hee.” I closed my eyes and tried to picture his “honeys,” plural. I couldn’t. “Wow, no, I wouldn’t mix up their sizes. That might be big trouble, and you wouldn’t want that, especially at Christmas time. Hee, hee, hee. Well, good luck with that.” Growing irrationally more concerned that he was about to ask me my panty size I began to inch away and look for my grown daughter, a daughter who had managed to completely disappear into a rack of little girl’s pajama bottoms during the conversation. See above. I know. I know. It was a harsh, biased, judgmental response to the perfectly nice overtures of a perfectly nice panty-loving, weirdo. I can’t help it. I’m a weirdo magnet. Linda (Two-For-One) Zern |
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