He Ain't Heavy; He's My Effigy

All entrepreneurs know that the formula for financial success is to “see a need, fill the need,” and by financial success I mean the making of so much money that you have to carry the cash around in metal buckets—with two hands. So here’s my business plan for a hot new start up company and don’t try to copy me.  I’ll sue.  I’m an American. I know lawyers. Well, I know of lawyers.

Okay, I’ve seen lawyers on TV.

After watching Greece, France, England, and large chunks of pretty much everywhere else riot their way through 2011, I recognized the need for a company that can provide realistic and anatomically correct effigies for improved public displays of righteous vexation and discontent—through burning.

Note:  Effigy is a fancy word for a stuffed dummy constructed primarily of dryer lint for ease of burning during public displays of righteous vexation.

I’ve called the new company Burn Big Dummy Burn, Incorporated, and I’m insisting that my family work in the factory, without pay, to keep costs down and profits high; I prefer to call them “my little dummy stuffing monkeys” rather than slaves. The Effigy Engineering Division is already in full production out in the garage—where all global mega-conglomerates begin.

Are you as tired as we are of watching a couple thousand of your fellow, global citizens whipping each other into a frenzied mob only to realize that their effigy stuffing committee forgot to bring the effigy? Or worse, the committee shows up with a dummy that looks like a pair of Granny’s panty hose stuffed with Kleenex.

Our company motto:  “Burn one of our dummies and no one will think that you’re torqued off at your garbage or Billy-Boy’s laundry; they’ll know exactly who you just reduced to ash.”

We at Burn Big Dummy Burn are continually shocked by the poor quality of the effigies we see burning on cable news. Those things don’t look like bad scarecrows, let alone recognizable international greed mongering leaders. We make it our business to keep poor planning and execution on the part of your “dummy stuffing committee” from putting a damper on your mob’s righteous rage.

We’re offering (at a reasonable price) effigies with both recognizable features and accurate cultural attire. You want to burn a government official in effigy, and we want you to. Just give us a name, and we’ll Google a face.

For a few cents more, your personalized effigy will come pre-soaked in the highest grade lighter fluid known to mankind for the flashiest, most dramatic flames possible outside of space exploration. We recognize that there’s nothing worse than a dummy that refuses to go up like a third rate re-make of “The Towering Inferno.” Don’t let your mob’s murderous hate fizzle.

In addition, our gorgeous effigies come with a dozen complimentary sticks, because we recognize that a lot of our clients enjoy beating their stuffed dummies senseless with sticks before they torch ‘em. Here at Burn Big Dummy Burn we know what gets your mob hopping mad and keeps your mob hopping mad.

Our expansion plans include the mass production of highly flammable flags, icons, posters, placards, and symbols. Why burn one flag when you can burn thousands? Of course, we’ll have group discounts for our very best repeat rioters. And you know who you are.

Your foaming, spitting, rock tossing protesters can count on us to be discrete, efficient, and prompt. We understand how tricky planning “spontaneous demonstrations” of anarchy can be, and for our international clientele it’s easy to place your orders 24/7 at our website: <www.WhotheheckisGUYFAWKESanyway.com>

Remember! Our mission statement:  You plan the snarling hate filled demonstrations, public conflagrations, and window smashing brick chucking, and we’ll take care of the details.

Complimentary bricks included with your first order!!!!!  Act now!!!!!!!

Sincerely,

Linda L. Zern (Entrepreneur, Small Business Owner, President, Whip Cracking Overlord, and CEO of Burn Big Dummy Burn, Inc.)

Book of Zern - Chapter Umpteenth

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 the heathen 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.                 

Happy Christmas and Merry New Year

I am a reindeer. Those are my antlers. It was a holiday moment of gamesmanship and high jinks. Nothing says Christmas like a panty hose crotch on your head stuffed with balloons. Some would question my wisdom in posting pictures of my "antlers gone wild" moment. Let them. I stand by my second place win! 

Down on the Hobby Farm - Zoe, Emma, Conner, Kipling, Sadie, Reagan, and Zac (Christmas 2011)

Merry Christmas - May your way be as pleasant!

Sugar Plums Dancing on my Gray Matter: A Christmas Story

The Christmas Crush

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  

Weirdo Magnet

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

  

Knees Like Knuckles

By the year 2099 (if we survive 2012, 2013, and the year that asteroid comes back with Bruce Willis riding on it) the world will be covered with old people. Some will be older than others.

I am anticipating that oldness will be very hip in the coming years and some oldness hipper than others, depending on the condition of people’s knees—also hips, real or faux. My husband and I will be on the tail end of the baby booming retirement craze, having been born on the tail end of the baby boom.  Actually, we were born on the fizzle at the end of the baby boom, which means that our hips still work (last check) but our knees talk more than they used to. Okay, our knees don’t really “talk” they cuss, and in my husband’s case, they swear up a blue streak.

The following is actual pillow talk between two fifty-somethings contemplating the end of their functioning kneecaps, okay, it’s a conversation between me and my boyfriend of thirty-three years (Sherwood the Knuckle-Knee Zern):

“Sherwood, I’m giving you the two minute warning. Brace yourself; I’m going to roll over and give you a hug and a goodnight kiss.”

I heard him rearranging himself next to me, amid the sounds of his shoulder popping, his knee mourning the loss of its ACL, and his spine snapping shut.

I rolled toward him and puckered up; his shoulder popped like a breakfast circle made by elves.

He moaned and clutched his shoulder, which brought his knee in contact with a particularly rough fold of bed linen. He thrashed around on our pillow top mattress. I watched.

“Babe, have you been doing those exercises with that big rubber band thingy the doctor gave you.”

“Which one?” he gasped out.

“Hunh, which what? Which exercise, rubber band thingy, or body part? Is that what you mean?” He continued to thrash, concentrating on not answering me. “Okay, have you been doing your shoulder exercises with the blue rubber band thingy the doctor gave you?”

He paused in his thrashing.

“I always pack the rubber band thingy the doctor gives me when I travel.”   

 “You know, you have to actually do the exercises with the rubber band thingy to keep your body parts from falling off with old age and mildew.” I started in on my (the-couple-who-exercises-together-stays-out-of-the-orthopedic-surgeon’s-office-together) speech, finishing with, “How many of those exercise rubber bands from the doctor do you have anyway?”

He considered.

“I have enough of those exercise rubber bands that if I sewed them all together I’d have a hell of a slingshot.”

“A slingshot might be a good thing to have when the zombie apocalypse gets here, ‘cuz you sure aren’t going to be outrunning those zombies anymore,” I said and gave him a goodnight kiss.  “And what’s with the cussing? You never cuss.”

“That wasn’t me; that was my knee back talking.”

I got up to take some Advil PM for the burning in my lumpy finger bones—also known as arthritis, which in my case is caused by meanness—also mildew.  Bring on the zombie baby booming apocalypse.

Linda (Got Fit Hips?) Zern

Pooping in Your Pants Never was Happiness

Potty training is a real **pisser.

Just ask Sadie, my three-year old granddaughter, who at any given moment breaks into hysterical weeping when she has a potty training malfunction or thinks that she MIGHT have had a potty training malfunction or SUSPECTS that she might have a potty training malfunction sometime in the future—near or far.

Just ask Kipling, my three-year grandson, who breaks into hysterical weeping when someone mentions to him that it might be time to change his diaper, a diaper hanging approximately to his ankles and filled with “the usual” byproducts—also an action figure or two and random chunks of cement. We have a fun family nickname for a diaper that has seen dryer better days; we call it the venom sack.

Just ask Sherwood, my husband, who is sensitive (apparently) to something used at restaurants to create meals—like food, and who loves to regale the family at Sunday dinner with the tale of his famous potty malfunction in a public bathroom. In the lobby! Of a Marrott! At a sink! Don’t ask! Note: For the full story you have to come to Sunday dinner. That’s the good news. The bad news is that you’ll be required to change Kip’s diaper.

Just ask Heather, Kip’s mother, who has Irritable Bowl Syndrome and a Gastroenterologist. Heather says that when she goes to the doctor, it’s a waiting room full of eighty year olds and her, but it’s worth it to get the good pills. Heather’s doctor says that IBS is often caused by internalized stress, probably from trying to potty train a kid with random chunks of cement in his disposable pants.

Actually, several members of my family seem to have trouble with their gastroenterology and it’s not just the toddlers, which makes family outings exciting. Receptacles that members of my family have considered using as an emergency potty include: trashcans, hastily dug holes, a hedge on the National Mall in DC when the public bathroom was closed for cleaning, and my handbag.

And that’s why I don’t believe in “the dignity of man,” because there’s no such beast and even if there were such a beast as a dignified man, he’d still have to poop somewhere. Trust me on this.

Linda (Regular Jane) Zern

**Pisser – a crude ancient Greek word meaning a pain in the diaper.

       

College Age: Education that is Higher

I go to night school. I go to night school to pursue higher education, which is education that is higher or taller than lower, shorter education. You can tell if education is higher because the people are taller—also sleepier. Presently, I am studying Major English Writings I.  These are major writings like Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales, but they are not in English. Another way to tell if higher education is higher than lower education is that the class titles will be wildly misleading.

In lower, shorter education there are classes called “Reading Time” where you sit in a circle and read stuff. In higher, taller education there are classes where you sit in a circle and you read stuff, but the stuff you are reading will be incomprehensible. The stuff you read in the taller education will make you long for a Star Trek Universal Language Translator or the Swedish Chef from the Muppets, because at least the Swedish Chef makes you laugh.

After you have read the incomprehensible stuff that sounds like the Swedish Chef making meatballs, you will be asked to write stuff about the stuff you have read. There are a few rules:

1)    Incomprehensibility will be punished.

2)    Wild theories, outlandish speculation, and big words are rewarded.

3)    Whatever you write, there can always be more or less of it.

4)    Nothing means what you think—a flea is never a flea.

I was excited to see that we would be reading a poem about a flea in major English writings. I thought, I can always use a few good tips about flea control and outbreak prevention here on the farm. Alas (that’s a word I learned in higher, taller education) alas, I had not embraced rule number four, see above. I was not alone.

At the big circle table where we sit, the student on my right shifted in her seat.

“I’m going to say that the flea is a fetus,” she said.

Another skill I have acquired in higher education is the ability to speak out of the side of my mouth, under my breath, so that my identity is concealed in a group setting.

“I like it. Flea starts with F, fetus starts with F. The teacher will love it.”

My friend was encouraged.

The girl on my left leaned over and in a conspiratorial tone whispered, “I don’t think you can go wrong if you mention the word ‘penis.’ I think the flea is a penis.”

“Nice.” I reassured her.

“How about the flea being the embodiment of the church’s inability to establish a system of semi-institutional ways to castrate the male dominated society’s need to express its infantile sexuality, or the flea is a pregnant alien with a penis.”

I’m not sure I actually heard this or just hallucinated it.

Somebody asked, “Linda, what’cha got?”

“Fleas suck?” No one laughed. “Nothing. I got nothing.”

My problem is that I’m a writer. I write about fleas and peas and creaky knees, and I have a hard time not thinking like a writer or about the writer. My sympathy is with the guy who wrote about the fleas and what he was thinking about when he wrote The Flea and whether or not he’d been having a hard pest control week, or if the flea situation at his house was just totally whacked out . . . and brother, I feel you. I really do.

Here’s to higher education that is taller and smarter and deeper—don’t forget deeper.

Linda (Smarty Pants) Zern

The Droopy Truth

My husband (Sherwood Kevin—and they called him Sherwood not Kevin) and I have racked up a fairly impressive list of most embarrassing moments over the past thirty-three years of marriage.

There was the time Sherwood ran out of gas in the drive-through of McDonald’s where he had to push the car up to the “pick-up” window. Then there was the knee surgery/Sodium Pentothal fiasco when Sherwood had a little trouble coming “out of it” and told the Nazis’ (i.e. nurses) in the recovery room that he had four wives and thirty-seven children and a really HUGE . . . um . . . REASON for all those wives. Talk about Big Love. Then there was the bubble gum on the hairy buttocks incident—also Sherwood.

He’s racked up a fairly impressive list of embarrassing moments. But remember I haven’t even begun to discuss the reams of charming, noxious, embarrassing moments involving various body fluids erupting in public places from our children during the “four kids, six and under” years.

The mistake is to assume that once the children are potty trained and the hubby’s knee rehab is over, that it’s finally over—the embarrassment of being alive and breathing various gases which produce—when mixed with, oh say—a Coney Island hotdog other chemical reactions. If anything, the relentless march of age just makes for a lot of fun opportunities to be total bags of gas and droopy body parts. Now, “most embarrassing” is almost a competition, and I’m thinking I’ve taken the lead.

From a recent phone call confessional:

“Boy, did I have an embarrassing moment today at work.”

Not shocked, I asked, “Now what?”

“Well, I got up from my desk to greet some co-workers, and when I stood up I just let fly with a giant . . .”

Cutting him off, I yelped, “What!?”

“You know.”

“No, what? You let fly with a groan, moan, sigh . . . what?” I paused and embraced the dawning truth. With slow drip horror, I said, “You. Did. Not!”

“Yep! Right there in my cubicle.”

“Did anyone say anything?”

“Nope. But their faces said it all; it was so embarrassing.”

Silence descended over our conversation like a helium balloon filled with methane.

“Well,” I said, “I think I’ve got you beat.”

“I don’t know; that was pretty embarrassing. I’d never met those people before.” Skepticism mixed with humiliation in his voice.

“I’m telling you; I’ve got you beat.”

“Okay. Shoot.”

“You know how on Mondays I clean house in my big old sweatshirt, and I don’t wear . . . you know, anything . . .”

“Rubber gloves?”

“No! I don’t wear, you know . . . foundation.” (Foundation is a Southern word for bra. It’s a cultural thing.)

“And you’re not talking about makeup.”

“Right.”

“So, I had some stuff I needed to put in one of those plastic snap Rubbermaid totes, you know those plastic storage buck-ity things with the lids that I buy by the truckload from WalMart?”

“Yes.” It was a worried “yes.”

“Okay, so after I shoved the junk into the plastic thing and I went to snap the lid closed,” I said, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, “I snapped the end of my . . . self in the lid.”

Silence.

“You mean, the part not wearing foundation,” he said.

“Roger that,” I sighed. “But the worst part is that the plastic lid was closer to my waist than my chin when I snapped my . . . self into it.”

“Wow, bummer. Okay, you win. You now hold the most embarrassing moment prize.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Mother Nature.”

And so it droops; I mean goes, and so it goes. I’ve never been one to herald “the dignity of man” much, because I’ve never found any part of living to be very dignified. Mostly it’s just people pretending that nothing disgusting ever comes out of their noses or other orifices—ever. But it does, and we all know it. Not only does disgusting stuff come out of us all the time, sometimes it lingers in the air and wafts over into the cubicle next to you. So here’s hoping that this week finds you downwind and your droopy bits safe from snappy plastic lids.

Note:  If you find these references too obscure please email me, and I’ll be happy to tell you that Sherwood farted in front of some clients he had never met, and I snapped my nipple into a Rubbermaid storage container.

Linda (Flopsy) Zern

  

Defaced

One of my professors is trying to establish and encourage a charming collegiate tradition on my college campus. He wants folks to rub the head of the Benjamin Franklin statue when they walk, jog, saunter, scurry, or skulk by it.

I could not be more horrified.              

The bronze Benjamin Franklin statue sits on a park bench near Orlando Hall in a posture of casual relaxation.  He’s all sprawled out like my Uncle Morris lounging on the couch when his flatulence is kicking up; I said it was casual.

At the beginning of the semester, I wandered over to wish Old Ben a grand goodnight on my way to the parking garage when I realized that someone had defaced Benjamin Franklin’s crotch with what appeared to be a mixture of chocolate milkshake and shellac. Defaced? De-frocked? De-crotched?  (I’m an English major, and that’s why this last bit of wordplay is ironic.)

My first thought upon seeing Mr. Franklin’s crotch . . . coated with faux muck stuff was performance art or political statement?

My second thought was I’m frightened.

My primary physical reaction was to stumble backwards away from the defacement and yell, “Oh what in the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is that?” And then I scurried by, continuing on my way to the parking garage, in the foggy humid semi-tropical darkness—alone.  I tried not to speculate where a person would mix up a batch of chocolate-milk-shake-shellac-crotch-bomb: a lab, a dorm, a bathtub in a dorm, or that shaggy hedge next to the parking garage.

With all due respect to my professor, I’d like an alternative assignment.  I’d like to know if it would be okay if when I walk by the statue of Benjamin Franklin near Orlando Hall that I just rub my own head and maybe skip a jaunty step or two?

Linda (Statues are People Too) Zern

Stink Bug Acid Attack!

Emergency Meeting of the Zern Family Emergency Response Team -

Zern Family Emergency Response Team Mission Statement:  To form and coordinate a coherent, agile, and capable response to emergency situations up to and including, alien body snatching, wandering zombie hordes, mule invasions, water moose infestations, and exploding maggot migrations (anywhere, anytime, for any reason.)

Also, it would be nice if someone could find out why that kid is screaming her guts out!!

 

“Referring to Emergency Situation # 3127-12, StarDate – sometime just the other day,” I paused, referring to notes scrawled on my forearm.

“Would someone like to explain why, when there were children screaming bloody murder in the chicken coop on Sunday, no one got up out of their lawn chairs and physically moved to assess the threat level?” 

One team member pretended to sit up straighter and another practiced nodding, boney shoulder shrugging, out numbered faux nods—four to one.

“Okay, let me ask it this way.” I folded my lumpy finger bones in front of me, resting them on the picnic table.

“What exactly did you think was happening when you heard,” I glanced down and read the inside of my wrist,  “‘It sprayed Zoe in the eye. She’s blinded; she’s blinded!’ followed by horrified screaming and shrieking?”

My husband considered his official answer from behind closed eyelids.

“I thought that a chicken had pecked her,” he said, opening one eye.

“You heard, ‘It sprayed Zoe; she’s blinded’ and you thought, chicken pecking attack.”

“Or maybe a drive by chicken spitting. They spit you know?”

Several members of the team shifted uncomfortably in their lawn chairs.

“I told you that,” I reminded him. “I told you chickens spit.”

And I had told him about chicken spitting, a painful truth that I had learned while working at my first job. I was an egg picker at an egg farm. At least I hoped those chickens had been spitting at me.

“Okay Team, new rule. When you hear screaming, coupled with the words sprayed and blinded, feel free to assume STINK BUG ACID ATTACK. The proper response being visible physical MOVEMENT toward the actual screaming.”

Sherwood raised his hand.

“Was it necessary to blow Zoe’s eyes out with the garden hose?”

“Listen, Hero, is Zoe blind? Did stink bug acid scar her for life? Does she still smell like the butt-end of a stink bug?”

I handed out a fact sheet concerning the procedures to follow when a Tree Stink Bug shoots acid into your seven-year old granddaughter’s eyes. Step 1) Fire hose kid in face with water.

I concluded the meeting by informing the emergency response team that I was promoting Conner (age 5) to Captain Supreme.

At the time of the attack, Conner had calmly informed me, “I stomped that stupid stink bug to deff.”

“Excellent job, Conner; you’re the only one who knows how to stomp stuff. I’m making you the boss.”

As for the rest of them there’ll be a series of drills and training exercises this Saturday, and I’ll be selling the lawn furniture at a garage sale.

Linda (Stay Frosty) Zern

 

BUTTER: It's My Class Project

Linda L. Zern

Class Project Proposal /

Major English Writings I

October 2011

Children Sampling 300 Year Old Bog Butter in Ireland--For Fun?

Butter:  A Bigger Deal Than One Might Think

The Beginning:  “After the zombie apocalypse, when the Wal-Mart burns down, falls over, and sinks into the swamp, what food would you miss most?” This question is typical of the kind often posed at my house during Sunday family dinner. I looked at my five-year-old grandson, Conner, and he looked at me, and together we said, “Butter!” Since that moment I have been on a vision quest in search of a way to make butter using home grown sources in spite of zombies, cataclysm, and grid collapse.

The Search for Facts: Butter is easy; I have learned. Any nomad with an animal hide and time on their hands can jiggle enough raw milk (goat, sheep, cow) to produce a lumpy emulsification of fat. Animal skin bags on the back of a bouncy horse, barrels on a bumpy cart, churns with a dasher, and a jar with a marble can suffice.

The History: Without refrigeration, butter lasts longer than a glass of milk. Without refrigeration, cheese lasts longer than a glass of milk. Butter and cheese are tasty and a method of food preservation, more common in colder climates anciently than in southern climates. 

The Ultimate Goal: To be able to produce the raw materials on site (our six acres in Saint Cloud) to make our own butter because Conner and I will die without it.  I’ve settled on Nubian milk goats as a source for the raw milk (although cow’s milk has larger fat molecules and separates more easily than goat’s milk, cows are gi-normous and can tip over automobiles when annoyed. Goats are smaller, smarter, and rarely snap people’s spines.) I already grow the herbs (garlic, etc.) for flavoring. Note: Milking goats for butter and cheese is a twice a day, time consuming process that requires planning and forethought—a lot. I’m not there yet. 

The Class Project: A brief, hands-on (class involvement required) demonstration of butter churning (with baby food jars, a marble, and heavy cream,) clashing, and the sampling of homemade butters traditionally enjoyed in the days before the Kraft Corporation, while discussing the strange tale of butter as a tool of social and religious oppression.

The Crazy Truth About Butter in History: I have discovered that butter was one of the points of contention for Martin Luther in his break with the Catholic Church. Butter was produced and used extensively in the northern, colder climates (England, Scandinavia, Germany.) Oil was commonly used in the southern countries (Italy, the Mediterranean, Spain.) Rome and the Vatican (in warm sunny Italy) prohibited the use of butter during Lent. No worries. Businessmen and the church offered to sell oil to the north. No worries. The church offered a pay-for-play-scheme to allow the northern countries to use butter during lent if they paid a butter tax—nice fundraiser for the butter tower of Rouen.             

Weird Problems I’ve Encountered, And Of Which I Was Completely Ignorant: I wanted to bring in an example of “raw” or unprocessed milk to show the class how unprocessed milk naturally separates. Shock. It is illegal to sell raw milk in Florida. It is not illegal to drink it—just sell it. Anyone selling raw milk must mark it “for animal consumption only.” The government regulations have therefore driven raw milk sources underground and jacked the price of raw milk up to $15.00/gallon in Florida.  Whole Foods just pulled raw milk from its shelves. Like Lisa Ling, I’ll be forced to go undercover and underground to investigate the sordid underbelly of the black market of the organic/raw food movement. I’m actively seeking a raw milk pusher.

The Chemistry: Any number of factors can keep milk from becoming butter: too cold, too hot, too little fat, poor diet of the producing animal, too slow of churning, a curse, the witches next door.

Things I’ve Found Fascinating So Far: The amount of physical energy and know-how required in feeding a family in days gone by. How recently our modern conveniences were invented and how completely dependent the developed world is on them, and how much knowledge is always being lost and how quickly. Goat’s milk butter is harder to make than cow’s milk butter but better for you. Goats are browsers not grazers and will eat my weeds. How much of the world still lives like it’s the 13^th century (I learned this from my son, a combat soldier in the 101^st Airborne, who recently returned from a yearlong deployment on the Afghan/Pakistan boarder.) Goats and donkeys, that’s how the world still lives. And I find fascinating how many thousands of years worth of human beings managed to drink unregulated, un-FDA approved milk and still survived long enough to make babies.

PS   Can I dress up as a butter churning peasant woman in the middle ages, for my demonstration, in lieu of bringing a live goat to class? It would have been my neighbor’s goat; I don’t have goats yet. I do have an outfit. DON’T MAKE ME BRING IN 300 YEAR OLD BOG BUTTER!  (I’M KIDDING) IT’S ALL GONE. WE ATE IT.          

QUICKIES: Postings that are short and sweet!

A stray cat decided our chicken coop was the right spot for her two newborn kittens. So far, she does mommy cat things, and the chickens do chicken things, and I haven't seen or heard a rat since she moved in. It's WIN-WIN-WIN!!

Halfway to Techno Dead

Last night in my English Literature course, the girl next to me pulled one of those amazing I-gadgets out of her book bag. She began to tap away on her high tech marvel while simultaneously checking in on Kim Kardasian’s Twitter update and downloading a sales flyer for knock-off designer shoes.   

I looked down at my workspace. Out of my ten-year old book bag, I had pulled a clipboard with a legal pad and an assortment of pens, highlighters, and a Sharpie marker (I love them.). I might as well have pulled out a dried piece of animal hide and an inkpot. I stacked my textbooks in a pleasing configuration while simultaneously counting my writing instruments.

Several young folks flipped open their amazing computering machines while simultaneously looking for an outlet. Power cords began to creep and crawl over every available surface seeking the mother ship of power sources. A scuffle broke out over the last plug. A couple of the students posted an update on Facebook about the viscous lack of cheap, available electricity created by magic solar panels, attached to windmills, powered by Keebler elves.

On the way to school, I was informed via my car radio that studies show that Facebook users over fifty years old have a harder time adjusting to changes on the social networking site than the average two-year old. I scoffed. Then I scorned. Then I yelled at the radio.

“It isn’t that I can’t figure out the new face of Facebook. It’s that I don’t want to. I don’t have time to figure out the new Facebook, because I’m halfway to dead. My time is precious.” I balled up my fist and shook it at the invisible radio waves floating around in space.

In the car next to me, a teenager type flipped open a cell phone with her chin, punched in a series of numbers with her nose, and then weaved into my lane of traffic.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Go kill someone your own age. I’m ALREADY halfway to dead.”

Later, in my Major English Writings night class our professor informed us that in her day classes it was becoming harder and harder for her to find students who had heard of the book of Genesis in the Bible, let alone anyone who had read it. For a minute I felt smug. Then I felt sad. Then I wondered if for all our technological advances we are becoming a people without a culture or a past or an identity.

And here I sit halfway to dead and me without an I-phone or I-pod or I-chip in my brain . . . and my husband stole my Kindle. All I have is fifty years worth of everything I’ve read, experienced, lived, learned, touched, done, and loved—way too much to Tweet.

Linda (No-Tweet) Zern 

Hubris (In the Third Person--Mostly)

The woman, all one hundred and six pounds of her, balled up her lumpy-knuckled fist, raised it to the sky and declared, “I’m so sick of making ‘A’s. They don’t mean anything. If I make one more ‘A’ I’ll scream.”

Sherwood—oops, I mean, her husband. Her husband (who just so happened to be named Sherwood like my husband) looked at his wife and grunted. He was used to her dramatic gestures of cosmic defiance.

“You know God has ears and can hear you, right?” he said.

I didn’t care, and the woman didn’t care either.

Heaven’s angels, well known for their writing of the Book of Life and use of sticky notes, wrote down the goofy declaration word for word. Served me right. Served that lumpy-knuckled woman right too. Heaven, always on the lookout for kooky talk and hubris, got right on the case.

Not two weeks later in Major English Writings I, a college class of her own choosing, the woman with the big knuckles and bigger mouth took my first quiz for me. I wish.

 

Well, whoever took the quiz, she stunk at it, and the woman (who could be me) made her first ‘C’ since I was a sophomore in high school. And I made that ‘C’ in Algebra, which is a subject that should be counted as a foreign language. The only way I can see Algebra being helpful in my day-to-day life is if I, or that other woman, got teleported back to ancient Egypt, the Nile flooded, and my back yard disappeared under a ton of mud and hippopotami. Then I might use Algebra to calculate where the chain link fence used to be.

So I—strike that—she. So she got a ‘C.’

Her children were shocked.

Her husband grunted.

Her dogs demanded to go on a walk.

Heaven smiled and a couple of angels high-fived.

And the Canterbury Tales written in Middle English continued to give her a big, fat headache and make my eyes cross.

So let this be a lesson to us all; if you’re going to shoot your big mouth off, make sure you whisper and that other person, who could be you, does too.

Linda (Just Kidding) Zern

        

Caution! Lumpy Land Bumps

Welcome Home 101st Airborne -
 Currahee Nation

Driving our son’s 2004 Jeep Wrangler Sport to Tennessee for his 101^st Airborne homecoming was like traveling to the space station in a zip lock sandwich bag, shot out of a potato gun. There was a lot of flapping.

Don’t get me wrong; I love that Jeep. I looked absolutely adorable driving that little red Jeep around Saint Cloud blow-drying my hair. My hair never looked better then after driving to the gym with my top off; I mean the Jeep’s top, not my personal top. If I’d been driving around with my personal top off, well then I would have been arrested for “indecent stringiness,” that according to one of my daughters who walked in on me taking a bath.

She was happy to tell me, “Geez, Mom, the only word I can think of is stringy.”

I wanted to buy that Jeep from Aric; I looked so adorable in it, but because of inspired governmental programs such as Cash for Clunkers, his Jeep is now worth approximately $200,000. So back it went.

It was a loud trip, fun—but loud; what with all the flapping plastic and the sound of tires exploding on highway 24-West. A semi in front of us had a tire blow and a mini-van next to us had a tire dissolve into strips of rubber road trash. And then we hit the lumpy land formations called mountains. Okay, maybe they were hills, but for a native Floridian any pointy dirt where the rain runs off and doesn’t form frog swamps is a mountain. I hate mountains.

My husband, also a native Floridian, seems indifferent to mountains. He drives the same speed, once the cruise control is set, regardless of the changing terrain, car trunks we get close enough to reach out and touch, or number of tire bits flying past the windshield.

At the sight of the sign reading “Caution – 5% Grade” my heart started beating harder, while my hands convulsed around available, exposed metal Jeep parts.

“Honey, you know that I hate stupid mountains. Slow down.” My stomach tried to crawl up through my throat.

“My Dad used to tell us kids that there was nothing on the other side of those stupid mountains in West Virginia when we drove straight up the stupid side, and you couldn’t see anything but stupid sky. Stupid mountains. Stupid vacation.”

My fingers started to cramp and sweat around the noise of snapping knuckle bones, while the sound of my childish screaming banged around in my memory.

“My Dad could be such a jackass.”

The highway swirled and curled. My ears popped. I made note of the guardrail in front of us that resembled twisted tornado rubble.

“Hey? You see that metal railing that is all smooshed down right there?” I would have pointed but my fingers had fused with the atoms in the sissy bar.

“Yeah.” He cruised on, speed unchanged.

“Yeah! It’s smooshed down because some jackass went through it. Slow down! Or one of us is going to die and it ain’t going to be me.”

It was a loud trip, fun—but loud, what with the flapping, snapping, exploding, and screaming.

Linda (String Cheese) Zern

Staff Sergeant Aric S. Zern and Sherwood K. Zern
Fort Campbell Kentucky