Perfume: The story of a murderer

It doesn't end well.

By Patrick Suskind

Snarked by:  Sorcia MacNasty

This is easily one of the creepiest goddamn things I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some, well… just look at this blog.  It’s also a totally compelling read, for reasons I have trouble working through.  For one thing, the main character, the eponymous murdering perfumer, is kind of a total sociopath.  Hard to relate to a guy who wants to kill a bunch of virgins just to make a snazzy magical perfume.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Because this was written by a German, it begins and ends with complete horror.  I’ve seriously been teaching German lit for about 4 years now and I am continually amazed at the sheer volume of HOLYFUCKINGSHIT that is replete in books written by German authors.  Full Disclosure:  I have not read ALL German literature, so maybe there is some cheerful shit?  If so, please let me know in the comments.  Really.  I’m starting to worry about the Germans in a very serious way.  The books I have read?  Full of rape, creative murder, guys trying to fuck robots, castration fear, sexual innuendo that is either lost in translation or the scariest way to discuss bang-bang time possible.  Everyone seems fucking depressed, repressed, and most of the books end with gory suicide, failed suicide or people living in nut-houses, smearing their own feces on walls and gibbering.  WHY, Germany, why?!  Are you unaware that there are kittens in the world?  And an internet?  CHEER UP.

You're welcome, Germany.

Ok.  So our protagonist, the murderer, is born in a fish stall in Paris, in the 18th century.  His mother births him LIKE A BOSS under her table, cuts the chord, assumes he’s dead like the other 4 kids she pooped out in this fetid market, and leaves him among the discard pile, which consists of blood, guts and FISH HEADS.  But the baby wakes the fuck up and proceeds to bawl his face off, alerting her terrifying birth plan to the local authorities.  She is hung for infanticide and he gets sent to a monastery.  Where he’s rejected by both his wet-nurse and the monks because he has no smell.  Read that again.  Yep.  No smell.  It freaks everyone out.  Also?  Babies should smell like caramel, we’re informed.  He is named Jean-Baptiste Grenouille [Grenouille is French for "frog"... see what Mr. Suskind did there?] and booted off to a Roald Dahl-like orphanage run by a woman who, luckily, cannot smell so doesn’t get that the baby is evil, you know, because he has no smell.  What a bastard, amirite?  Also, he has the superhuman power of being able to smell everything, ever, like a fucking madman.  Which, well, just wait.

People do not like JPG, ever.  It’s the scentlessness, in part, and also his complete creeptitude.  He gets a job in a tannery and then weasels his way into a job with an aging perfumer who is astonished by his mad skillz in essential oils.  Somewhere along the way, he smells this perfect goddamn smell.  It’s coming from a young girl.  He follows her, sniffing her out through the alleys of Paris, and eventually catches up to her as she slices her plums.  Instead of showing her the business end of his meat stick, though, he just wants to sniff her to bits.  Welp, that can only mean one thing in German literature — It’s Murder O’Clock, people!  Yeah, totally strangles her and snoots her all up one side and down the other, until her scent fades as she, you know, begins to ROT.  He has a sad.

Eventually he heads off to learn better distilling methods in Grasse, spending a quality-time side trip in a cave on a fucking mountain where he finally realizes he has no smell.  This pretty much solidifies his cheerful hatred of all humanity.  Remember that part.  It’s gonna be a theme.  He has a sad.

He gets a job and starts learning about how to distill scents.  You know this ain’t gonna end well, now.  After snooting out a few delicious virgins and ending their lives, he eventually masters how to distill their smell, using animal fat and gauze or some shit.  He also shaves them, using their hair to get all the scent possible.  Now, the reader has been treated to a few lectures on how perfume is made, and we know he’s gotta have 24 of these smelly bitches to create his ultimate perfume, plus a 25th, elusively awesome scent that he’s gonna add in for kicks.  Then the cops start noticing all these dead, shaved adolescents all up in their business and it’s like, “Hey, maybe we should catch this insane motherfucker, even though he’s not cocking them — they all die virgins.”  There is a curfew and JPG is temporarily slowed down in his murder parade.  He has a sad.

Finally he gets all the dead smells into his bottles except for the 25th.  That one he’s saving for the scent of the richest girl in town.  She’s also the hottest.  And *ahem* a redhead.  Just sayin’.  But!  He’s awesome at being stealthy and murdery because, ha-ha on you fate, he has NO SCENT.  Dogs don’t even know he’s there.  No one ever notices this spooky bastard.  Anyhow, hot redhead = Laure.  Her dad, magically guessing that she is about to be killed and scent-stuffed into a bottle, takes her the FUCK out of town.  No problem for captain olfactory, though.  He just snoots her out and hides in the barn.  Waits.  Totally murders her with her dad in the next room and extracts her sweet, sweet smell.  I am telling you — this dude is remorseless.  But see, he HAS to make this magic scent because it will finally make people love him!  No one notices or loves him!  Aw!  SAD.  Murders are kinda justified, then, right?  No?  Ok.

Meanwhile, his shit gets discovered back in Grasse.  Like, all the dead chicks’ hair and clothes and whatnot.  Whoops.  They gonna get you, sucka!  He does get arrested, finally, but he’s got his magic bottle of Smelltastic now, so, joke’s on you, French Police.  He’s all about to be nailed to a goddamn cross and have his joints all busted, in public,  but he slips some perfume on right before trooping up the scaffold.

HOLY BADASS SMELL, BATMAN!

The whole town gets a whiff, declares he’s an innocent angel and then THEY HAVE AN ORGY.

(I could not even make this shit up, people.  Germany, my hat is off to you.  Again.)

But, JPG is having the biggest sad of his life.

He didn’t like being loved.  It kinda creeped him the fuck out.  He realizes — this is his actual epiphany — that it’s really better to hate and be hated by humanity.  Wow.  Thanks for the life lesson, Suskind, you bleak asshole.  Laure’s dad?  Kidnaps him because he’s delicious and tries to make him his own “son.”  JPG is having none of this heartwarming bullshit.  He books it back to Paris.  Back to his birthday fish-stall, in fact, or thereabouts.  Dumps the whole vial of awesomesauce over his head and lets the hobos just come for him.  They, quite rightly, cannibalize him.

Could happen to anyone.

Anyone in a German novel, anyhow.

So he’s been eaten and the author jovially tells us that the cannibal hobos are pleased with themselves because they did something OUT OF LOVE.  The fucking end.

Fine holiday fun, people.  Bring the whole family!  Seriously, though, do you know who the other recent male lead is who has a freaky thing for how ladies SMELL?

This douche.

Yeah.

Sorcia’s Spooktacular Story

I posted this on Jezebel.com when they asked for your creepiest ghost story, and it’s gotten quite a response.  So in honor of Halloween, enjoy, kids!

 

Why the Country is Scary

By Sorcia MacNasty

————————————

The South: Where cars go to die

We have never figured this out. And now, the three living witnesses have to be good and fucking druuuunk to discuss the whole thing.

I was 7, my brother 10, my mom in her early 40s, my grandmother (her mom) in her 60′s. So we were all cogent. No one was too young or too senile to not recall this nonsense. Yet, still no bloody answer.

Grandma lived on an isolated country road in NC that was named after her family since they were the only crazy fuckers who lived on the land for about 1000 acres. And I *do* mean crazy. We have stories about relatives that start with, “You remember that time Uncle Bob was in the ditch with a shotgun?” “WHICH TIME?!”

Her house had been empty for several weeks while she’d been visiting us in Florida, but we were all back, spending the weekend with her before trekking back to the Sunshine state. The house is in the foreal country, literally over train-tracks, past a salvage yard and her nearest neighbor (a cousin — everyone is related to everyone who owns a house on the road) ain’t within screamin’ distance. Yes, that seems to be a real system of measurement — “screaming distance.”

It’s early in the AM, like just before daybreak. We’re awake because these are farm freaks who wake at the crack of dawn from sheer ingrained habit. We’re eating cereal when we hear someone pull up outside. Curious, we all run to the big picture window that looks onto the front yard. There is a strange truck there. No one seems to be behind the wheel, though the engine is idling. The truck is… well, old, for one thing. It’s old-timey like from maybe the 1930′s? You could picture the Joad Family heading to California in this thing. It’s rusted but it was probably once painted blue.

We stare at the thing, bewildered. Mom asks grandma if she knows who that is. Nope, not a clue, says grandma. She runs to get the phone to call her cousin and ask him to come up — she thinks maybe it’s a hired hand and he’s just at the wrong farm. Just as she asks him to come on down, the phone goes dead. Well, that’s unsettling.

All at once, there is a loud, insistent banging on the front door. We all scream. My grandma, who is terrifyingly resourceful, huddles us all into the living room, away from a window where anyone can see us. Then, while mom, me and my brother tremble there on the couch, she grabs a serrated bread knife from the kitchen and cautiously approaches the front door. She peeks out a side window, very stealthily. She turns back to us and looks confused. She shakes her head, like, “No one is there.” We all kind of breathe easier.

Then EVERY goddamn door in the house is banging — relentlessly. I can still hear it. Rhythmic and terrifying, like all the doors are about to splinter and crack. There were two doors in the basement beneath us, so the sound is also a reverberation at our feet. The three ground-floor doors are shaking — we can see them trembling and jerking on their hinges from our vantage point on the couch. Finally, mom runs to the window — either from a psychotic break with reality or terror, I have no clue. She cries, “Oh thank Christ — Cousin is here!” We run to her and peek out the picture window — there is no one that we can see in the yard, but we can’t see all the doors from our viewpoint.

Cousin walks by truck with a shotgun in his hand. Cousin, it should be noted, has pretty much every gun ever made. He looks puzzled, looking at the rear of the truck, then he glances in the cab window and he stops. He goes pale, runs a hand down his face. Then he RUNS towards to house, towards us.

My grandmother flings open the kitchen door as she sees him coming. He shouts, “Everyone get behind the couch! Get DOWN!” He runs past us as we bolt for the couch. The banging starts AGAIN, all the doors and now we can hear the windows rattle. It’s like a tornado or the end of the world. We are too scared to even scream. Cousin flings open the front door and fires the huge shotgun, once, BANG, deafening. As he does, the truck roars into life and it sounds like a train. We scramble up; the banging stops, mercifully. Cousin is advancing onto the lawn, gun leveled at the truck. We run behind him, wanting to be out of that shaking, quivering house and near the dude with the gun. The truck peals out, backwards, cutting across the yard and racing into a breakneck speed. Tires sqeal, rubber is burned. Cousin fires again and we all cower behind him. He blows out the back window with the sound of a thousand plates smashing into linoleum but the truck never even hiccups, just roars down the road. No tags, not even a vanity plate on the back.

There was NO ONE behind the wheel of that thing.

We all had a clear view. Everyone agreed. Not a driver in the cab.

Well.

Not anything we could SEE, anyhow.

The police were called. The phone line had been cut. There was not a single boot print in the entire yard except Cousin’s, from where he’d run into and out of the house. Cousin reported that there had been no plate but when he looked into the cab, it looked like “something from a horror movie.” He said there were all kinds of weird restraints — handcuffs, c-clamps, nylon straps — and he said the floorboards looked covered in what “smelled like” blood to him (Cousin was famous for his keen sense of smell and the window was down, so it’s possible).

Cousin said he thought he saw a blur of something out the picture window and ran to fire the first shot, but “missed” because, once he stood there, nothing or no one was on the lawn or in the truck. Then it shot backwards out of the yard and out of our lives, leaving no answers, just a deep sense of unease every time we’d visit.

Grandma and Cousin have passed. Deeply religious people, they stuck by their unchanging versions of the story until they died. My brother, mother and I have never been able to figure it out — neither did the cops, I think it should be noted. We don’t know how all the windows and doors were banging, and we don’t know why we never saw a SOUL anywhere or how they could get around the sides of the house without leaving a trace in the damp earth.

Appendix:  Luker can back me up on this part — when I told this story in Oxford to a group of friends, one of them was recording my voice in the dark.  The next day, the recording was all fucked up, like you couldn’t hear anything, make anything out.  Also, that same night, one of the remaining great-aunts still living on the road died.

THEORIES!

1)  Was it crazy “Red’s” ghost?  He was my great-aunt’s tit-fucking crazy abusive husband who held a grudge against the family since they all beat the tar out of under the guise of a drunken horse-shoe game after he’d tortured my poor great-aunt for years.

2)  I don’t think it was Uncle Bob.  For one thing, he was basically a good guy, just unbalanced.  It was the voices, really.  And he was a minister.  So.

3)  A light-stepping party of dwarf serial killers?  I mean, maybe the driver was just really short…?  Though that still doesn’t explain the other shit.

4)  Our wild-eyed neighbor “Mousie” kept bees and a pack of slathering, half-feral hounds.  I don’t know how the bees and hounds could have staged it all, but we tended to list “Mousie” in our Usual Subjects just because he was one of the weirdest motherfuckers in a 20 mile radius.

5)  Maybe it was this crazy yokel?  If it was him, then ironically I taught his distant relatives at the John Denver School.

6)  Finally, we found out something that *may* help explain the mystery, but it would be a purely supernatural explanation and we’re not really sure. Apparently, there was a farm hand during the Depression who was fired by my great-grandfather because the guy weirded-out the livestock. That dude was fucking pissed and stole some tools before he left. Well, we kinda knew that part of the story. BUT, we recently found out that after he was lynched by a small town mob a few years later because they suspected him of raping and torturing a family — a family that consisted of a mother, her two kids, and an elderly grandmother.

EXACTLY the same fucking family that was in our house that day.

Riddle me that, motherfuckers.

 

Kids Just Aren’t Noticing Penis Like They Used To

The Sun Also Rises

By Ernest Hemingway

—————————-

Man, lemme tell you.

When I first read Sun Also Rises in college, I felt like I was playing some bizarro game of Penis Bingo.  ”Page 18!  Line 12!  PENIS!”  I would mutter with crazy eyes.

I had just learned about phallic symbols and I have a copy of the book that I lovingly refer to as my Cock Copy since it’s full to the brim of underlined penis/sex references.  It looks like a total perv was jerking off to Hemingway in the most literary and freakish way possible.  If red ink was jizz, my copy would have been soaked.  And possibly impregnated.

Not kids today, though!  I was tutoring Hemingway’s tome, gleefully pointing out choice moments and suddenly noticed that the room was still, eyes on me warily, like I was asking them to please picture their parents naked, covered in Thousand Island Dressing and doing the nasty on their heads.

“Wait.  Your professor hasn’t been talking about all the sex stuff?”  I asked, cautious and worried, dry-erase marker hovering like an anxious insect in my hand at the board, in the middle of writing, “Baton @ end = SWELLING PE–”.

“Well, there’s that whore in the beginning.”  One kid offered, nervously eyeing his fellow students.

“Er, sure, but Jake can’t do anything with her.  Because he’s ‘sick,’” I unwisely winked broadly with the word “sick” making me look like a carnival barker hawking illicit Modernist porn from the nudie tent.  They blinked back at me.

“Yeah, what does he mean by that?  He ain’t sick.  He’s drunk, but not sick.”  Another kid said, scornful and irate.

“He had his dick blown off in the war.”  I clarified, sad dry-erase marker finally collapsing in defeat by my side.

Complete.  Fucking.  Silence.

“WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS WRONG WITH HIM?!”  I finally shrieked.  Blank zombie faces.

“Well, I thought he was gay.”  The first moron contributed succinctly.  ”That’s why he can’t get with Brett.”

“But,” I sputtered, “there’s that whole section where he’s angry at the homosexuals with Brett.  They annoy him.  And he’s in love with her!  He is SO NOT GAY.”  The kid shrugged.

“I thought he had, like, crabs, or the clap or something.”  The single girl in the group offered.

“Wait a tic — you kids still use the phrase ‘the clap’?”  I said, mystified.  ”Jesus.  Where am I, 19-dickity-2?”

“How do you know he got his dick blown off?”  The second kid was flipping wildly through his book, clearly thinking there would be a nice graphic novel version in the middle that he’d carelessly overlooked.

I showed them the passage.  They, correctly, pointed out that it’s not very specific.  I begged them to work on reading subtext and consider other clues.  They continued to look at me like a creepster at the arcade offering tokens in exchange for dirty hand-jobs out back.

“They all drink a lot.”  Second kid mentions, suspiciously.  I looked at him.

“Yesss…”  I said, encouragingly.

“So, he probably didn’t even know about having no blown-off dick.”  He finished, horrifyingly.

I looked at him for a minute.

“How drunk would you have to be, son, to not notice that your man-bits were missing?”  I asked, almost kindly.

Point taken.  But JESUS.  It was like pulling some motherfucking teeth.  What kind of awful world are we living in when kids are more interested in illegal absinthe than a veritable literary wonderland of cock?!

"Not Suitable for Children"! It's right on there.

Song of the Nibelungs

Summary of a German Classic…

This thing.

A medieval German hero epic, depicting the struggles of Sigfried:  Dragon slayer, treasure stealer and wife beater.  Yes.  Really.   And in that order. 

Before we even get to the Dragon Slaying, we have to listen to the dreams of this seemingly random princess of Burgundy, Kreimheld.  Like most good German princesses, she’s sequestered in a tower with a mother named Uta.  Kreim has a dream about an eagle and decides this means her husband will be killed violently, likely with stabby things involved, and it will all be her fault.  Naturally, she decides that the only reasonable reaction to this dream is to take it completely seriously and vow to never get married.  This isn’t going to matter later, as women were pretty much slaves and bitch will do as she’s told. 

Sigfried, Prince of Xanten [read: The Netherlands.  Kind of.] shows up in Burgundy and meets Kreim’s brothers, King Gunther, Princes Gernot and Giselher.  Note — they are all dicks.  But Sigfried is willing to put up with some dickery since he wants to get with that hot virgin booty, Kreimheld.  Are the menfolk pleased that a prince of the Netherlands has shown up to take the tiresome dreaming twatwaffle off their hands?  No.  They are not.  Then a vassal (like a professional ass licker, but with a sword) named Hagen bounces into the room and tells everyone how amaaaazing Sigfried is.  He’s all like, “OMG, you guys.  For serious.  This dude.  He killed the warrior brothers Nibelung and Schilbung [hah!] then reached over and also totally murdered a dragon.  He has a fuckpile of treasure that he raped a dwarf into watching over for him.  Oh, and he has a cloak of invisibility and a super nice sword.”  At this point in the narrative, we have to assume that Hagen is pretty much ready to make sweet sweet love to Sigfried, who is all, “Yeah, it’s TRUE.  Also, I bathed in that dragon’s hot delicious blood and am invincible.”  Well.  Pretty invincible.  Too bad Sigfried is a manchild who let a leaf fall on his back while bathing in the blood, and now, LIKE ACHILLES, he has one small spot where he can be penetrated [Yes, that's what she said]. 

The King and his bros are like, Welp, this is a bastard we should have stick around.  He seems insane and impossible to kill.  There is no way this will end badly for us, especially considering he wants to bone our sister.  They invite him to stay and he’s kinda like, er, I sort of wanted to bang your sister, is that something you could help me with?  They’re like, NO.  But he’s sneaky (and has a cloak of invisibility, let us not forget) so he sticks around. 

Then he helps them murder some Saxons and Danes. 

The peasants rejoice. 

He gets to meet Kreimhild.  They hold hands and go to church.  It’s love at first sight. 

Gunther’s penis, however, has been inspired by all this mutual affection and he realizes that he would like a warm spot to park his Little Man each night, also.  There is a bitch in Iceland who will do, though it seems kinda sketchy when he wants Sigfried to go with him as a vassal (remember, vassal=professional ass licker) to “help” him in his suit of Brunhild, princess and professional crazy person of Iceland.  Also: super strong lady bits. 

Sigrfried, who is being driven now by a desire to touch Kreimhild’s boobies, is all “Sure, let’s go to fucking Iceland.”  Off they go.  Upon arriving, Brunhild greets them, “Hey, gents.  So, welcome to Iceland.  I’m Brunhild, the one you probably came to try and lay your man-meat on.  Here’s the deal — you go head to head with me in three feats of strength [apparently Iceland is the birthplace of "Festivus"].  If I win, I get to straight-up murder you all.  If you win, I’ll marry you.” 

Paying no attention whatsoever to the murmurs/shrieks of protest from his men, Gunther heartily approves this deal with all the enthusiasm you can expect from a cock-divot like this guy.  Brunhild then explains that Gunther will have to throw a rock farther, a javelin farther and jump further than she can, because this harpy LOVES the fucking Olympics, apparently.  Gunther, who is borderline retarded and/or not paying attention, feels like these are odds he can beat. 

And then she shows him the rock.  It’s the size of a goddamn mountain.  Worried Gunther has a worried.  She hefts it up in one delicate paw and tosses it like halfway around the earth, bats her eyelashes and is like, “Your turn, yo.” 

Now.  Time out.  Do you really want to be married to a lady who can do this, Gunther?  You will have to be on good behavior for the REST OF YOUR LIFE.  Otherwise, she will murder you with rocks.  Easily. 

Gunther, proving again that he has the brain power of a bicycle pump, decides to have his go at it.  Meanwhile, Sigfried rolls his eyes and runs back to the boat to get his cloak of invisibility.  Then, invisibile and with the strength of 12 men, he helps Idiot Gunther finish the tasks and win.  Brunhild proves to be a gracious loser when she says, “Wow, nice work.  Yes, I will totally marry you, I just need to wait for my motherfucking army to show up real quick.”  Concerned about what the male relatives of this Lady Beast are going to look like, especially armed and on horses, Gunther asks Sigfried to save his ass yet again.

Off the thankless Sigfried goes to conquer the shit out of the Nibelungs.  He shows back up with his own sizable army and Brunhild is just like, “Oh, fine.  I will fucking marry you and not murder you all with my army after all.  Let’s go, bitch-cakes.”  Big honky wedding in Worms, with Sig and Kreim also getting hitched, and then poor Gunther faces his wedding night with his blushing bride whose hobbies include bench-pressing Buicks. 

Brunhild, not well at all with all this submissive wife nonsense, beats the fuck out of Gunther in their wedding bed, hog-ties him and strings him up on the ceiling.  Gunther, though dumb, is not impervious to humiliation and asks Sig for help AGAIN, this time with managing the Hell Hound he’s vowed to have and hold for the rest of his (likely to be short) natural life.  Sig, who is sort of a glutton for punishment, says, “Ok, I have a really subtle plan.  I will sneak into your bedroom tonight in my invisibility cloak, beat the hell out of your bride and then hand her over once she submits.” 

Gunther:  “I LOVE THIS PLAN!  There is nothing not awesome about it!  Oh.  Well.  Er, one thing, ok?  Don’t bang my wife, dude.  Not cool.” 

Sig:  “Would I bang your wife?  C’mon.” 

Gunther:  … 

Sigfried does this, beating Brunhild into submission and totally teaching her the Netherland Crotch-slap in the process.  He also finds her super-strength-giving magic ring and girdle, somewhere, while putting his P in her V, and he gives these to his own wife, Kreimhild.  Brunhild afterwards submits to the tender, sloppy administrations of Retard Gunther, putting her Buick-hefting hobbies aside. 

That’s all well and good, and years pass.  Then, feeling bored and vaguely vengeful, Brunhild starts to talk shit about Sigfried to her husband.  She talks him into inviting him and Kriem down for a visit so they can totally murder them hang out like old times.  Gunther, again proving that the genetic pool was a tad shallow on his end, agrees.  Vassal Hagen, who has been conspicuously absent all this while, show back up and decides he doesn’t like Sigfried anymore either.  The queens have a catfight over who gets to go to church first and Kreim totally calls Brun a whooore.  Brun cries.  It’s amazing.  Here’s a visual:

Now it’s all on like Donkey Kong.  Hagen, who is a complete tool, gets Kreim to stitch a little cross where Sigfried’s super secret point of vulnerability is.  She is the only one who knows this as his WIFE.  Why she trusts Douchey McVassal Doucherton is a mystery, but I think the message is that ladies are not super goood at understanding complex male concepts like NOT TELLING PEOPLE WHERE YOUR SINGLE POINT OF PENETRATION IS LOCATED. 

Sigh.

Hagen, like the utter asstree that he is, waits until they’re hunting and Sigfried is getting a little drink of water from a stream, like a tiny deer. 

BAM.  Hagen pwns Sigfried with a murdery javelin to the back, using that help cross that Kreimhild provided unwittingly.  Now, some scholars, I should note, find this part reminiscent of rape — after all, Sig is penetrated in his one untouchable spot from behind (while bending over) by another man holding a long phallic-shaped weapon. 

Ahem.  See what happens when you go hunting, kids?  And, just to write large his legacy of complete Fuckturtle status, Hagen throws the treasure of the Nibelungs into the Rhine river. 

Kreimhild, not fooled by the fake boo-hooing over her husband’s “hunting accident” gets right the fuck over to Asia and marries the castle-stomping Atilla the Hun.  He puts a baby in her IMMEDIATELY and they invite everyone for the baptism.  Well, that seems legit.  Pfft.  Even Hagen, butt-sauce that he is, is like, uh, guys?  I am fairly sure that crazy cooze still wants to kill me.  Everyone else is like, STFU, Hagen.  You’re so dumb that you throw treasure in rivers.  Besides, Atilla the Hun has the most raging parties and super good booze.  Quit hatin.  And off they all go. 

And of course there is a whole bunch of murder.  Just balls to the wall craziness like this:

Except with swords and horses, not balls and wheelchairs. 

No one will tell Kreimhild where her treasure is, which makes her go ballistic and start a decapitating spree.  A character named “Olde Hildebrand” suddenly bolts out from no where and slices poor Kreimhild to bits in a rage.  Everyone is dead and the last chapter is pretty much a body count. 

And that, friends and allies, is why Germany is pretty fucked up.

Who Should Play Casey Anthony?

Let’s not kid ourselves, troops — there WILL be a TV movie about Casey Anthony and it will probably be on Lifetime.  Now, there are rumors that Kristen Stewart, the hair-pushing little sprite of Twilight “fame”* is in the running. 

This is WRONG.  I mean, sure, she has the dead-behind-the-eyes 1000-yard stare of someone who could murder a baby.  And if the allegations of sexual assault are correct on Casey’s part, then Kristen has plenty of practice from being man-handled by her sparkly boyfriend.  But she really doesn’t have that je ne sais quois…

There is only one person equipped with the looks and talent to play Casey Anthony, consumate liar, alleged victim of sexual assault and unemployed native Floridian.  That, my friends, is the actress who portrayed “B” in The Human Centipede.  Just LOOK at them!

Now, I am not suggesting that Casey Anthony be sentenced to be a part of a Human Centipede if convicted, though she is being tried in Florida where anything is possible.  I would be more inclined to see the media asswaffles who have turned this goddamn thing into a circus turned into one giant Human ‘Pede since they’re already so good at shitting out of their mouths. 

Of course, I’d also like to see Christopher Walken play her dad, so I doubt anyone in Hollywood is listening to me. 

*Here, “fame” = “notoriety for being a singularly terrible actress in a teeny-bopper movie that encourages young girls to like boys who stalk them and withold sex”

Riddle Me This

Teaching, I think, could truly be an Olympic event as an exercise in sheer patience. 

My class needed to do ONE thing this week — come up with a Persuasive topic to write a paper on.  That’s it.  Tell me what you’re going to research and persuade a reader about.  About half of them did this, in a couple of sentences or less.  Fine.  Good.  Not complicated.  The other half?  They turned in one-word responses like, “Drugs,” “Marriage,” “Education,” and, sort of creepily, “Guns.” 

I feel like I need to send out a memo reminding the class that we’re not, in fact, playing Balderdash or Apples-to-Apples and are, in fact, engaging in college-level coursework. 

Also, in other strange news: My college’s student body felt the need to TP the Quad in “honor” of Bin Laden’s death.  Now, they usually roll the quad for athletic victories (luckily for our beleagured janitorial staff, we have had a piss poor season).  I can understand how a brutal finals week would be enlivened by celebration, but it struck me as just creepy and odd.  Am I wrong?  Perhaps I should have embraced my inner sociopath and brought some TP myself?

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Coleridge

Well, kids, let’s all prepare to hang out with Samuel Coleridge. 

Context:  The Romantic Period. 

[Aside:  When the students don't already have notes on the context, I am delighted to give them some, as follows.]  Ya’ll can thank Wordsworth for deciding he was too badass to settle for some shitty second-hand literary movement, because he creates his own, like a self-righteous poetic nutcanoe in The Prelude.  He rattles on about the absolutely Critical. Fucking. Nature. of poetry in modern society (read: 1785 — 1830) and lays out a bunch of anal retentive rules about spontaneous emotions, paying heed to everyday magical shit like daffodils, and the supreme importance of featuring young innocent girls prominently in any good poem.  Needless to say, this sets the bar kinda high… high and a little creepy. 

[Note:  Once, when teaching Wordsworth, I asked the class what they thought he meant by "Spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling" and after an interminable pause, one student raised her hand and suggested, "Rape?"]

Such a high/creepy bar naturally freaked the fireballs out of small-town dreamer Sammy Coleridge.  He got bored with Cambridge (which is what he gets for not going to Oxford, *ahem*) and joined the goddamn Dragoons (remember the evil assbaskets who torment Mel Gibson into gibbering insanity in The Patriot?  Yeah.  Those dudes.) under the hilarious pseudonym, “Silas Tomkyn Comberbacke,” ostensibly so he could keep the same monogrammed towels, I guess? 

[Note:  My first born or next terrier is totally getting stuck with the name "Silas Tomkyn."]

Old Silas’s life was just one giant buttgathering of bad choices and self-induced misery, though.  You’d think that would suck, but luckily Silas was a ROMANTIC.  Now, Romantic, in this context, does not refer to the execrable movies you’re forced to watch on date night (unless your date night is of the variety involving safe words and barely legal porn).  No, in this context, “Romantic” means “The start of the Emo Bitchface Movement.”  Next time you see a hipster you’d like to stab in their skinny jeans?  Wordsworth says, “You’re welcome.”  Anyway, Silas/Samuel (SiSam?).  He marries a woman sort of on a bet, a union that prompted him to say he was “resolved but wretched” about their upcoming wedded bliss.  Remember this later:  Weddings are not happy things for SiSam. 

Things you should know about SiSam in reading Rime of the Ancient Mariner: 

1) That boy gobbled opium like it was water and his tongue was on fire. 

2)  He heard the story from a drug-addled friend of his who said it was a “dream” (the friend’s name was “Cruikshank” and if that’s not the name of an seasoned criminal and dog-rapist, then I don’t know what is), and then collaborated on it with Wordsworth until they had a slap-fest fallout in 1810 and defriended one another on Ye Olde Facebooke. 

3)  He was such a cheerful bastard that he is described at this time as “a broken man, an inveterate drug addict, estranged from his wife, suffering from agonies of remorse, and subject to terrifying nightmares of guilt and despair from which his own shrieks awakened him” (emphasis added).  Instead of retiring quietly from society and murdering his own weary ass, though, he decides the time has come to write some motherfucking poetry.  And he does. 

Rime of the Ancient Mariner: or, how one mistake will cause supernatural genocide and ruin your life.

There is a long-ass Latin quote about truth and the human mind, but we’re going to skip that.  Instead, BAM.  Part 1! 

Like a hobo of ill tidings, this crotchety old mariner bounds out of fucking nowhere with surprising speed for such a “grey-beard loon” (line 11) and pounces on these three good-and-freaked-the-fuck-out kids moseying their way to some wedding.  Mind you, he’s probably reeking of his own feces and a lifetime of regret over dead birds, so the dudes are less than inclined to listen to his horse-drawn nonsense.  Naturally, he latches his mental death-grip on the guy actually related to the wedding party and LIKE A BOSS uses his hobo magic to hypnotize the kid into sitting there in a creeped-out trance, probably in the middle of a public street.  No one interferes because 19^th Century society was apparently composed of apathetic dickweavils who are cool with old crazies accosting the citizenry. 

Captain Crazypants Mariner is all, “Let me tell you all about my spectacularly bad decisions!”  And the poor wedding guest is like, “For serious, I am really kinda scared and would like to go party at the wedding like it’s 1999, please and thanks.” 

[Note:  You have the fucking paranormal ability to hypnotize people into submission and THIS shit is what you're doing with your life?  Worst. Wizard. Ever.]

Anyhow, Mr. Black-raincloud-of-joykilling is having none of this, even though the guest “beat[s] his breast” in alarm (line 31), which strikes me as less effective than, say, chewing his own eyes out or punching the old grouch right in his drysack.  Also, the guest notes that the bride is “Red as a rose” which make me wonder if she’s got some serious allergies, horrendous acne or what (line 34).  Regardless, the Mariner launches into what appears to be the Romantic edition of “Ice Road Truckers,” all while his hostage (let’s be honest about their relationship) is probably thinking, “What fresh hell is this?”  Turns out, he was a sailor (or MARINER) on a scary South Pole-bound ship that is followed by, innocently enough, an albatross. 

Yeah, those dead eyes clearly indicate the presence of an honest soul inclined to help humanity.

 

But the Mariner has some random degree in assholeology and, picking up his crossbow and presumably thinking, “Fuck birds,” shoots the thing dead. 

Pictured: The Mariner in all his glory.

Now, the textual note, helpfully supplied by Weepy McColeridge himself, says, “The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen” (emphasis added), though clearly the word he’s looking for is “INEXPLICABLY” (line 79).  Seriously.  Mariner O’Retard shoots the bird for NO. Discernible. Reason.  It is NEVER explained. 

[Note:  Getting my students to wrap their head around this is like asking them to bend spoons on sight while completing the Sunday New York Times' Crossword puzzle.  Seriously -- fuck off, Will Shortz.]

So this is not going to end well, but we’ve still got a shit-ton of crazy to wade through, so put your batshit-grade boots on and let’s keep on truckin’.  The Mariner has just shot the boat’s pet and not a single person ham-fists his groin or wrestles him down to spit in his mouth.  What kind of Ice Road Trucker Sailors ARE THESE?!  Regardless, they all have advanced training in Superstitious Bullhonky, so they are pretty fickle about reacting to the poor dead bird, which,  by the by, is going to lay around on the deck for fucking DAYS, during a boat-drought, mind you.  I mean, if they cared for the thing at all, wouldn’t they, I dunno, chuck its corpse overboard, if only to get rid of the rotting goddamn bird carcass on deck?  They don’t.  Evidently, scurvy-ridden sailors in pre-penicillin days were cool with bird germs.  And they continue to fail at life and sailing, because the breeze disappears along with the bird’s life-force and they’re stuck at sea, “sad as sad could be” (line 108).  Whomp, whomp.  Picture a bunch of Eyeores just sitting around but with no one to notice their birthdays.  Or, more importantly, offer them water.  Because, you see, there is sea water (“Water, water everywhere,/Nor any drop to drink”) but drinking saline will just hasten an already horrible death that’s awaiting them and Coleridge has plenty more looney-tunes to spout (line 121 — 22).  In the only spurt of hilarious creativity seen in this poem, though, the judgmental dicksandwich crew hangs that rotted supernatural demon fowl around the Mariner’s neck.  Hah!  That’ll learn him. 

Part 3 is comprised of the crew slowly dehydrating, best summed up by Coleridge in another of his pithy notes:  “And horror follows” (line 167).  It sure does!  There is a ship, which the Mariner is able to report by gnawing into his own vein and thus dampening his dry-ass throat with his own blood (likely befouled by fowl parasites).  Probably in a dehydration hallucination, the Mariner sees two crazy ghost bitches gambling on deck of the approaching death ship and a pale blonde hottie wins his soul.  Because THAT is how souls work, people. 

In Part 4, one key moment is when the increasingly uncomfortable Wedding Guest speaks up and is like, “Uh, if you and your scary brown hand is less than alive, I’m going to be pissed” (he seriously repeats “brown,” like wtf, Coleridge?  Why you hatin’?).  Mariner is like, “Relax.  I’m totes alive.”  Goes right back to babbling.  Blondie, known as “Life-in-Death” (don’t you bet her high school years were pure hell?) gets to work and straight-up murders the entire crew except for our favorite prick-imprint, the douche with a dead bird around his neck.  There is a veritable tit-storm of spine-slurping devil fish that initially irritate him, but then he decides, what the hey, at least they’re still alive and I’m pretty much surrounded by empty human husks, so…  Bless you, spine-slurping devil fish.  Bless you.  BOOM!  Abra-fucking-cadabra, this idiot STILL WEARING A DEAD ALBATROSS inadvertently thinks the right thing and the Vengeful Shit Bird falls off his neck.  Hurrah!  Poem is over! 

Hah!  I lied.  It’s so not over.  Part 5 depicts a little ho-down of the damned, when the bodies of the dead crew start steering the ship again, prompting the poor wedding guest to promptly deliver a WTF to this bullshit and speak up yet again about this verbal rape he’s enduring.  Mariner shushes him, pretty much, and goes on to blather about spirits and angels telling him to do some goddamn penance. 

Now.  Wait a sec.  Let’s review:

Mariner:  Shoots a bird. 

Punishment:  Dead germ-condo bird hung around his neck (read: NEXT TO HIS FACE); Nearly dies of thirst; forced to hang out with dead crew until even slimy soul-fucking eels look like they’re ok guys; watches his dead friends come to Zombie-life while he shivers in his own shit (presumably; there are no potty breaks in Coleridge) and terror. 

Does the poor bastard really, really need to do penance on top of this?!  Personally, I think he’s good and fucking sorry for his one little bird-slaying, that’s all I’m saying.  If you honestly think he’s ever gonna point a cross-bow at anything again, you are not paying attention. 

Crew:  No one else shoots a bird.

Reward:  DEATH. 

Part 6:  Opium is a Hell of Drug.  The Mariner hears “angelic” voices (I beg to differ, but no one asked me) forgiving him for his “crime.”  They then take the dead crew up to heaven, just as the Mariner is close to his homeland and can see the Pilot (a guy whose thankless task it was to go get shady crew members from a big ass boat), the Pilot’s kid (who is completely worthless and irrelevant) and the goddamn Hermit.  SIGH.  Guess who suddenly wants to whine to the grace-granting religious nut about his bird problems? 

Part 7 begs the question:  Mr. Mariner, do you really not think you’ve suffered enough?  Who is your god, dude?  Some fucking Mayan Eat-People deity?  Sheesh.  You are a fucking masochist by this point, son.  Regardless, his penance is granted from the Hermit (note to self: don’t take a penance seriously if it’s given to you by some ascetic sociopath who chooses to live alone and who apparently has the ability to sink ships … I like to call him “Loose Lips”).  With the boat gone, though, you sort of have to wonder if this whole thing is just the Mariner having a psychotic break with reality.  What, no evidence?  Pfft.  That’s no good reason to stop accosting innocent wedding guests and ramble out the lurid details of your pathetic life story to them until they dry-heave up their soul. 

Anyway.  The penance is that he has to go fancy-stepping all over the place and tell this horrible story until someone sensible shrieks “Fuck this ghost noise!” while intelligently running away.  The Mariner claims that he just mysteriously *knows* when he’s found the right person to tell…  Sure… Just like Lot Lizards know they’ve found a good John by spying a truck-seat full of kiddie porn and Vaseline.  Whatever you need to justify it, man.  He just tools around until his “Fuck with a Perfect Stranger” alarm goes off.  Moral of the Story?  Let’s love everything, “All things both great and small” indiscriminately, including jungle cats who want to choke down your entrails or vicious water pigeons who exist solely to teach you a supernatural and horrible lesson (line 615).  The poor guest is finally released, with a hearty, “Hope you enjoyed that cockslap of a story, kid!” and we’re told that he’s “sadder and wiser” from that day forth (line 625).  Jeez.  Regardless of your own beliefs, it all seems like a helluva inconvenient system for angels to spread good news, even if the Mariner IS worshiping some Mayan Prick God.              

 ***

That, my loyal readers, is what my students learn about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.  Lucky bastards, aren’t they?  Next time:  The Sun Also Rises?  Suggestions?

Westboro Baptist Church = Asstrees

If that ain’t a word, it should be. 

The least decent, tasteful and humane organization that brought us all kinds of crazy is making waves in my hometown – the cunt wagons are apparently going to be picketing my former high school in the near future, an action I would normally applaud.  But since they’re not there to picket the sub-par education levels and are instead protesting “violent and caterwauling” students, I just can’t get on board.  Seriously?  “Violent and caterwauling?”  Is that in Leviticus some place?  Deuteronomy?  Somewhere between the shellfish and how much you can sell your surly daughter for in the slave market?  Crazy people:  You’re only going to be moderately successful at your craziness with vague underpinnings like this.  Also, you open yourself up to much more hilarious and effective mockery.  Take note.

Literate Pets

I don’t know if I’m profoundly sad or profoundly grateful that my dogs can’t talk to me.  On the one hand, it’d be nice to have someone around to laugh at my jokes while I’m muttering to myself.  On the other hand, I don’t need no backtalkin’ animals whose shit I have to regularly handle and dispose of.  One thing is for sure, though — I don’t want a dog that can fucking write.  Especially a dog that will write pedantic, passive-aggressive notes and leave them taped to my car windows…

Douchecanoes: coming soon to a parking lot near YOU!

It says:

” ‘I told Dr. Doolittle that I like being in the car…’ 

signed

the Crazy White Dog you are looking at…Ruff Ruff”

What. the. Fuck. 

First, little white dog, if you’re talking to Dr. Doolittle [sic], at least spell the man’s name right.  Did he help you write the note?  Why don’t you sign your name?  It’s like the first fucking word a dog learns.  And if you have these amazing powers of note-writing, why are you still pedantically “ruff-ruffing” at us? 

I found this at my local grocery store, with a wild dog bouncing around inside the mini-van, frantically pawing at the windows and yowling.  Owner was nowhere in sight and was inside for longer than an hour, since that’s how long it took me to do my shopping.  I think she needs to take White Dog back to the good doctor, since I believe they got their wires crossed…

Also, she should probably give the thing a name.

How to Flash a Girl Scout

(And Humiliate Yourself in the Process)

1)  On the first warm day of the year, put on your sassiest little sun-dress to run your errands in (it should be light-weight and you should consider pairing it with your most absurd underwear)

2)  Note the delicious-looking cookie booth on your way into the grocery store.  Quicken pace.

3)  Do some distracted grocery shopping while thinking of Girl Scout cookies and nearly slam into every other person’s cart like a giddy bitch

4)  Picture yourself biting into that first Peanut Butter Patty or Thin Mint.  Drool a little.  Rush your shopping.  Who needs fucking bread?  Actual food stuffs?  Fuck that noise!

5)  Use your debit card to get money while muttering, “Faster, FASTER, damn you!” at the poor cashier.  Rush out door, money clutched in your sweaty paw. 

6)  Notice that these fresh-faced young girls are Brownies, about 7-years old, chaperoned by their father.  Not that it would matter if they were sketchy young men next to a van, at this point, with a hand-made sign saying “Free Thin Mints!” 

7)  Boom in your most insane voice, “Hi there!  Got any cookies?” 

8)  Chortle like an ass when they stare at you in confusion.  [OPTIONAL]

9)  Fork over an innappropriately large sum of money for such a towering pile of cookie boxes that you have to balance them precariously in your greedy arms…

10)  …  As a gentle southern breeze comes up behind you …

11)  … Which lifts the front of your skirt above your head, introducing the young ladies to your Sesame Street-themed undies.  [Yes, Sesame Street.  Don't you fucking judge me.]

12)  Just before dying of shame as you waddle towards your car, spine bending under weight of cookies, hear one young girl ask her father, “Was that the Cookie Monster?” 

Yes, Virginia, there IS a Cookie Monster.

No, they are not made from real girl scouts