Flowers for Jiminy

"Kill it," my girlfriend said.

"Excuse me?"

"Kill it."

Usually she wakes me up in the morning by dumping a bucket of cold water on my head. This was different--almost civilized in comparison. Besides, there are ever so many people I wouldn't mind killing, so I figured I'd run with it. "Who exactly is it you want me to kill?"

"Not who, you idiot. What. That...that thing. The cricket."
"Wait. Let me get this straight. You want me to kill a cricket?"

"Yes. Now."

"But, why?"

"It's chirping."

Now, it seemed to me that if I were forced to kill a cricket for chirping, I might as well be duty-bound to kill a bird for flying, a fish for swimming, or a worm for doing whatever it is that worms do. Besides, crickets in the house have always been considered good luck. They're not at all like those creepy gazillion-legged centipedes that deserve to be stomped until they're an unrecognizable mass of glop on the bottom of a shoe. Find a cricket inside your house, take him out to your backyard and send him on his way. That's always been my motto. So I thought I'd reason with her. "Why don't I just catch him and put him outside?"

She wasn't having any part of it. "I want him dead."

The woman was serious.

" Move the refrigerator so I can get him with the vacuum."

Obviously, there was no talking to her. Fortunately, I thought to remind her about my bad back and successfully begged off on the refrigerator moving. "I'll Google crickets instead," I told her. "We'll see what we're up against."

As you might expect, there are thousands upon thousands of links to crickets. Of those I read, most said a cricket could reasonably expect to live three weeks. But I also learned that a certain type of cricket can live to be almost five years old. I only read her the articles about the short-lived crickets. Why risk Armageddon when the odds were clearly in my favor?

For the first week the cricket was perky, chirp, chirp chirping pretty much twenty- four seven. I'm not saying he was arrogant, but rather that he had a high rate of confidence in his sexuality and ability to pick up lady crickets.

By the second week, it was clear he felt like a victim. He was still quite the bachelor. Though he continued to rub his wings against his hind legs, it sounded more like whining than chirping. That, plus a lack of food had an effect on him, and the chirps grew fainter and further apart.

By the third week he was in full panic mode. He'd be quiet for hours, then suddenly erupt in a desperate staccato of booming chirps. Sadly, this didn't endear him to any lady crickets and only made my girlfriend hate him more.

I felt bad for the cricket. I really did. And I tried to help him. But my girlfriend caught me trying to shove a small piece of iceberg lettuce under the fridge. Her ultimatum was clear. I could have either her or the cricket. Not both. Since the cricket hadn't yet made me coffee in the morning, my choice was obvious. I'd have to let him die.

Yesterday we had twenty-four hours of quiet. I'm pretty sure the little guy's gone. So, tonight I'm buying flowers. No, not for my girlfriend--for the cricket. And despite what she might say, I'm going to shove them under the refrigerator. I'm hoping that if there's a spark of life left in him, he'll take a bite of them. And then maybe another bite and another. I hate to see him go out this way--starving to death.

On the other hand, if he's already dead, he'll have flowers for his funeral. At least that's something, isn't it? And regardless of the cricket's health, or lack of it, I'll still be getting my coffee in the morning.

On T-ball and Writing

First, a little background here for folks who may not be familiar with the differences between baseball and T-ball:

Baseball - 9 or more innings; T-ball - 3 innings

Baseball - runs add up as each player crosses the plate; T-ball - no scoring

Baseball - clear winner, clear loser; T-ball - no winners or losers. Everybody gets ice cream

Now that you're all on board, I'll get on with my story.

A few Saturdays ago, I spent the better part of the morning watching a T-ball game. What a hoot! I wish I'd brought a video camera along to record all the fun little vignettes I saw. Charles Schulz would have been proud of these kids.

Let me tell you about my favorites:

- The second baseman who decided it would be more fun to sit on the ground and play in the dirt than play the game.

- The first baseman who thought it would be more fun to twirl around in circles than pay attention to the batter.

- The kid who became so bored with the game that he threw a temper tantrum, lay down in center field and refused to play any more.

- The pitcher who decided she had to run back to the mound, toe the rubber and go into a full wind up, including leg kick, before she could try to throw out the runner at first base.

So what does any of this have to do with writing? Well, none of it, of course, but I'm on a roll here. Let me try to make the connection.

THE KID PLAYING IN THE DIRT - It's obvious he didn't have his head into the game. It's equally obvious some writers don't either. They'd rather procrastinate--they'd rather go off and do something other than writing because it seems like more fun at the moment.

THE KID WHO TWIRLED AROUND IN CIRCLES - Well, certainly he had no idea what was happening in the game, but he found something he liked to do and did it over and over and over again. Some writers are like that too--continuing to add words to a scene that should have been completed long before.

THE KID WHO QUIT - There are writers like that too. The thin skinned ones. One bad critique or one rejection and they give up.

THE PITCHER WITH THE BEAUTIFUL STYLE - This kid had great form, and had she been pitching instead of trying to throw a runner out at first, I would have asked for her autograph. Unfortunately, she was more interested in style than substance, so first base might as well have been a turnstile. A lot of writers spend so much time refining and beautifying their prose they sometimes forget their goal--to write a compelling story.

Like these kids, writers sometimes forget their goals. Are you one of them?

Ask yourself a few questions:

Do you pay attention to the rules?

Do you keep your eye on the ball?

Is your head into the game?

Are you more interested in style or story?

One final thought about T-ball. Most of the kids I saw were five and six years old. They're going to get better. As a writer, are you?

Fun With Celina

I.Am.An.Idiot.

Here I was sitting innocently at my local watering hole, watching my Tigers beat up on the Royals, and finishing up the last 300 words of my part of a horror short story I'm co-writing with my frequent writing partner, Jbal. I was working on my laptop, which I don't normally use, 'cause my fingers tend to hit more than one key at a time, but, you know, it's hard to drag the tower, monitor and keyboard into the bar.

Anyhow. So there I was getting ready to head for home.

"Why don't I email the story back to myself so I have an updated copy of it?" I said to myself. (backstory: I don't have wireless at home and can't get the laptop to work on my home network. I also talk to myself a lot).

"Okay, I'll do that," I said to myself, opening up G-mail and dutifully attaching the document.

Only it seems when I thought I hit "S" for my email address, instead I hit "C" for someone else's. So she got the story. Unsolicited. Unbeknownst to her. Unbeknownst to me. Until I got her email this morning.

Like I said, I.Am.An.Idiot.

And I'm really sorry to have done that to her. It must have seemed presumptuous as hell.

On the other hand, I got a damn good crit out of it. *grin*
See, the woman who wound up with the story is Celina Summers, a writer too--a damn good writer--and she writes her share of horror, so she was not offended--even the testicle in the empty eye socket part didn't gross her out. In fact, she offered to beta the story when it's finished.

When I think of other people in my address book who might have gotten it instead of Celina, I cringe. That includes two sisters who simply would not understand how I could write about such filth, one daughter who knows I write about such filth, but who would disown me anyhow (though my other daughter would laugh about it), and many, many work/business contacts who would slowly back out of the room and never darken my door again. Or cross my palm with silver either.

So you can point at me and laugh now. I won't be offended, and I certainly deserve it. What the hey? I'll laugh along with you at this one.

How to make a stale Peeps & Dove Unconditional Chocolate Sundae

Take package of Peeps and poke a bunch of holes in it with a fork. Let sit for at least a month--but the longer the better.



Somehow acquire a 15.1 oz. container of Dove Unconditional Chocolate Ice Cream. Pose it next to your Peeps, on a cutting board, in front of your coffee pot and ahead of a container of Coffee Mate, which you don't use, but your SO does.



Remove three stale Peeps. Select your weapon.



Bisect them by slicing evenly between their evil little Peep eyes. Wipe up the Peep blood.



Chop up the little buggers.



Grab a few and stick them into the Dove container.



Shove the stale Peeps through the hard dark chocolate lid with the heel of your hand.




Grab the Peeps butchering weapon and mash the stale Peeps throughout the container of ice cream.



Eat your heart out, Ben and Jerry.

On Sam, My Eldest Granddaughter

by Steve Barber

All newborn babies look like something or someone. A small number of them look like tiny carbon copies of their moms or dads. Others, most of them in fact, look like little red-faced monkeys. But when my granddaughter Samantha was born, she looked like a roasting chicken.

Now, before you vegans and lacto-ovo-vegetarians get all upset about the 'meat' reference, I'll ask you to please chill for a minute. This story is not about roasting chickens. It's about Samantha. So go back to your soy burgers or tofurky sandwiches and don't fret about it. We're all friends here. Pour yourself a nice glass of organic Greek beet froth and have a rice cake or two while we move on. There will be no more chicken talk here.

Roasting chickens weigh about four to five pounds. That's pretty much what Sam weighed when she was born. Of course she showed up early--at eight months, rather then the generally accepted and much more reasonable time of nine months. If she'd had the decency to wait, she might have turned out more turkey-sized. But that would have brought even more flavors into play, so I guess it's just as well she wound up being the size she was.

The thing that bothered me most was that she could have waited one more day to be born, but she chose not to. See, Sam was born on March 16th. Had she waited twenty-four more hours, she would have been born on St. Patrick's Day--a date easy for me to remember.

You have to understand, I'm her grandfather. Us old people forget things like birthdays sometimes. So we count on our grandchildren to be cooperative--to help us remember by being born on days even we can't forget. But being the ornery cuss she was, she refused to give me that satisfaction. Now I have to mark her birthday down on a calendar and hope I remember to look at the stupid thing. The girl's evil. She really is.

Now, I suppose some of this evil is my fault. Being little as she was (remember the four to five pound chicken?) I nicknamed her "Bubba." Even though the nickname didn't stick, I think she always resented it, and has done her best over the years, to get back at me.

I blame her mother for Sam's evil streak too. Her mother is the one who named her "Samantha." In case you didn't know, the name "Samantha" is derived from the Potawatomie word "Som-unth-ayah" which roughly translates to "chicken-sized girl who grows up to rather handily beat her grandfather at air hockey."

But we weren't talking about chickens here, were we? No. We were talking about dogs.

We had a dog named Othello, a fine, upstanding dog if there ever was one. Othello wasn't quite sure what to make of Sam. All he knew when we brought her home was that she squeaked, cried and was, in a word, odiferous.

Clearly, she wasn't a puppy, but she was hardly a person either. Othello was confused, and being a dog, he was especially concerned as to where that left him in the pecking order of the pack. He knew he had seniority over her, and was easily a good fifteen pounds heavier. On the other paw, he didn't get to sleep on the couch; she did. It made no sense to him. He determined to stick by her side and keep an eye on her. That was something he'd come to regret.

When Sam was about three months old, she stole the dog's pillow. It was a huge, brown, circular, padded pillow covered with little black and white paw prints. It sat in the middle of the living room floor directly across from the television set. Othello loved to sprawl on that pillow and watch the CBS Evening News. One night at 6:00 PM sharp, he trotted into the living room and stopped short. Sam lay plopped in the middle of his pillow. He looked at her. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at her again. A tear formed in the corner of his eye and slowly trickled down his snout. He hung his head and skulked out of the room, utterly defeated. It was a sad thing to see, and Othello's knowledge of current events was never the same after that.

Little did he know things were about to get even worse for him.

At about four months, Sam started teething. For those of you with neither children nor little siblings, let me tell you a bit about teething. Teething is a tough time for babies, but it' even harder on their parents. The only worse time in a parent's life is the teenage years, when little Brandon starts wearing goth makeup, little Alexis comes home with a tongue stud and little Savannah insists on getting a tramp stamp. Teething babies are almost as miserable as teenagers. They whine. They moan. They cry. They run a fever. They drool. And they gnaw on anything within reach. Sam was no exception.

For Othello there was good news and bad news. The good news was that she found his kibble unpalatable. The bad news was that she appropriated his Nylabone® chew toy.

Think of this from Othello's perspective. Prior to Sam's arrival, he'd had a pretty good life. He had his pillow, he had his Nylabone®, and he knew his place in the scheme of things. Samantha had disrupted all of that. Now, as he stood in the doorway, he watched as she lay on his pillow gnawing away at his Nylabone®, and he could only wonder what she would do next to further destroy his life.

The poor dog was inconsolable. I took pity on him. I bought Sam her own Nylabone®.

All that happened a quite a few years ago--fourteen years ago, to be exact, which is long before vampires ever thought about sparkling. As far as I know, Sam has all her teeth now, and she no longer gnaws on chew toys. She's grown some too.

It's been an interesting trip with my first grandchild. Although I have and will continue to pick on her and tease her without mercy (as she does to me), I do hope she realizes I think she's a remarkable young lady. She's smart, compassionate, funny, competitive without being overbearing and has her head screwed on straight. While it freaks me out that she is so close to adulthood, it also gives me something to look forward to. I do so want to see how the rest of her life unfolds, and I'm planning to stick around long enough to see Sam's own little roasting chickens someday.

I'm proud of Sam. I'm proud of who she's been, who she is now, and looking forward to see who she becomes. And somewhere in Doggie Heaven, I can imagine Othello looking down, nodding his head and saying, "Yep. Me too."

Whatever happened to ghosts?

So, what has happened to ghosts?

Yeah, I know about Ghost Hunters, the TV show, but I'm talking about ghosts in horror stories--the kind of fictional ghosts that haunt houses, walk through walls and do bad things to people. Where have they gone?

Zombies are big now, which is fine. I've always had a warm spot in my heart for zombies. Vampires are even bigger, but of course the romance and YA authors have stolen them from the horror writers. Worse, they've turned them into sparkly vegan boy-toys.

*sigh*

Weres are few and far between nowadays. I miss them too. And you hardly ever see a mummy any more. But I miss ghosts most of all--the good, old fashioned, evil, murderous kinds of ghosts that kept us quaking in fear under the covers late at night when we were kids.

I think I first fell in love with horror as a child when I found out I was pretty good at making up ghost stories and scaring the hell out of the other kids as we sat around a campfire late at night. Seeing their effect first hand was great fun. There's really nothing quite as satisfying as watching your best friend's eight year old brother pee his pants because a story you made up on the fly scared the bejeebers out of him. Those stories were almost always about ghosts. I still think there is nothing more frightening than a good ghost story. So where have they gone?

I wish I knew.

Mr. King, Mr. Koontz? Are you reading this? What about you Mr. Little? Mr. Ketchum? I'm sure you're all regular readers by now *cough*, so let's get on the stick. I want more ghosts. Gimme ghosts. Bring back the ghosts.

Haggis' New Rule for Humor

In my younger days (1960s-1970s) a well-timed F-bomb or a crude reference to a reproductive organ would have me rolling in the aisles. Lenny Bruce knocked ‘em dead in the clubs with that kind of material. Richard Pryor too. But nobody did it better than George Carlin. His (in)famous 7 Filthy Words You Can’t Say on TV was classic. So if I laughed then, why don’t I laugh today?

Is it because I’m older? Is it because I’ve turned into some kind of prude? Is it because I’ve completely lost my sense of humor? Well, sure. But I think there’s another reason too. Vulgarity simply isn’t funny anymore.

Humor is a lot like horror, my other vice. They both sneak up on you from behind. The difference is that humor hits you in the face with a banana cream pie while horror chews your neck off. In both cases, it's the "sneaking up" that makes it work. And F-bombs simply don't sneak today. Why? Because they've become commonplace. They’re no longer unexpected. They no longer shock. They've lost their punch--their edge.

Hang around a bunch of teens or twenties long enough and you'll know what I mean. It's "eff this" and "eff that." It's "eff" as a noun, adjective, verb, adverb and probably a gerund too, whatever the hell a gerund is. So how can it sneak up on you when it's in your face all the time? It's lost its meaning.

So I'm declaring vulgarity dead in humor as of today, and I have to say I won't miss its passing. If you do, I'm sorry, but you're simply going to have to deal with it. Move along. Shock me with something different. Maybe try innuendo for a change. Innuendo's a lot harder to do, but it's infinitely cleverer. And it makes me laugh.