The Rumor Mill

Yummmmm........

2009-04-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again... Christian children's blood...

Come with Me into the Void

2009-02-08T14:08:00.000-08:00

Words are inherently problematic. Misunderstandings, emotional distress, and international wars are but some of the evils that come into being as a result of words. But it gets worse; misspellings and grammatical errors have burgeoned ever since as a species we became talkative and literate.

I knew I had to do something about it. I started with a game of Scrabble that my sister-in-law had left partially played on my coffee table. Slowly, one by one, I dismantled all her clever triple-pointers. I stuffed all the letters back into their jumbled little sack. Then I poured ink-eating acid into the bag. It is not only words that are dangerous; letters have the power to become words, and they therefore must be erased.

As a grand finale and to make my point clear, I took all the blank, acid-chewed pieces of wood with me onto the subway and dropped one onto the tracks on each stop. When I had surreptitiously dropped the last piece, I knew that that was one thoroughly destroyed Scrabble game. Much like Humpty, it would never be put back together again.

But it wasn't enough.

I was hungry for more. There were still too many words in the world, too many badly-employed adjectives and dangling modifiers. I moved on to dictionaries. I carted all the dictionaries I could find to the zoo and fed them to the llammas.

When I later heard that the llamas had died from indigestion, I knew my work had been good. Not only had the llamas taken all those words into their innermost private regions, where no man was likely to go, but the words had died a final death with them too. Certainly no one would plunge a hand into paper goop stained with llamas' gastric juices and last thoughts, even for the sake of a thorough autopsy. Those dictionaries were gone for good.

I was beginning to get good at this, but the internet posed a huge problem. Gmail in particular. I shuddered when I thought of all those MBs of electronic information stored away, blissfully slumbering in the promise of eternal asylum. I had to get at them somehow.

So I pretended to need an alarm clock and posted ill-informed questions on an electronics advice blog. I didn't really need an alarm clock; who could sleep with all those words ricocheting around the world? But I needed to attract someone who could help me.

Indeed, the first naive geek who advised me on alarm clock shopping turned out to be a top hacker! And he hacked into Gmail for me and let loose a veritable plague of bugs and worms. Soon Gmail was no more, and the world fell into disarray.

Telephone service was next. AT&T, Sprint, Vonage, they all had to go. For this I needed many pairs of scissors. I needed safety gear. I needed insider information. I needed, actually, a mass movement.

So I played a small trick. I knew that the writer/poet types wouldn't help me if I told them that I was trying to destroy words. They would find that kind of antithical to their raison d'être. So I lied! Ha ha! I told them that destroying phone lines and satellite centers was an artistic statement the likes of which the world had never seen! And due to my charisma and uncanny silence, they believed me. Like confused sheep, they scattered all over the country, the world, and cut phone lines, disrupted service, suffered electrical burns in the service of my vision. MoMa wanted to invite me to do an installation piece, but I installation-pieced their entire office and they were never heard from again.

It didn't take long before all the telephone wires shriveled and fell from disuse. The whole world came to look like an abandoned spiderweb. International chatter was stilled, and people, having nothing better to do, planted potatoes in their backyards.

The last frontier was the face-to-face spoken word. People were still talking. They were confused, abashed, very much inconvenienced, but still they spoke and giggled and whispered in the night. They quite simply wouldn't shut up. I needed to disable sound altogether. I needed to suck the air out of the world, to remove the medium through which sound waves traveled.

This was something that scientists had never done before. But then again, they had never tried. In fact, all it took was some dogged pacing about with a huge vacuum cleaner.

Finally, the clatter and chatter stopped. The world was impossibly silent, like the sound of condensed cotton balls stuffed into a million ears.

If you think you are sitting and reading this on an ordinary day, you are mistaken. The world as you know it is no longer; neither are there any words.

The principles of grammar rule supreme and unchallenged.

Just an Idea

2008-10-02T16:43:00.001-07:00

It is hard to generate good ideas with astonishing frequency, or even any frequency at all. But so what.

Yesterday I came up with two great ideas:

1) Inside-out gerrymandering. This is a strategy that ordinary people can implement to change the face of politics. Basically, all the people from states where they know there is no point in voting (either because their votes would be squashed by a wrong-thinking majority, or because there are so many like-minded voters that one more won't make a difference) move en masse to swing states where their votes will count. Wow! They are now being heard in the electoral college and maybe even getting their candidates into office.

Ultimately, this can become such a trend, that politicians will pay people to move to states where they want more voters. Possibly this is illegal. Well, never mind. In this visionary universe, all those funds that the candidates raise, instead of going to buy ad space and things that don't really improve anyone's quality of life, would go to help people buy condos in Florida.

Also as an added benefit everyone would only have neighbors that they agree with, except in the swing states where everyone would be passionate, disagreeable, and vociferous.

2) I forgot my second idea.

My Stint in Chinuch

2008-07-23T07:46:00.000-07:00

When Bais Rivka called me to give the Tznius speech at the Chof Beis Shvat convention, I was not surprised. My skirts always ended well below my knee, yet way above my ankle. My shoes were scuffed, my waistline was obscured in layers of tweed fabric, and my shaitel was delicately askew. My kick-pleat was ostentatious. I had dressed thus for 4,037 consecutive days. Yes, I was counting. Now my time had come.

I entered a large hall brimming with teenagers of all stripes: fun and cute, snobby, insecure, cool, nerdy, and cynical. They were all wide awake and as brimming with energy as the hall was with them. (Think about that.) Many of them did not want to listen to me. They were chattering to each other, texting each other on their cell phones, and even cheering for their schools. They were adorable and noisy. They did not daunt me.

I put an aidel expression on my face and strode to the podium. Some of the students continued to gossip and cheer, but I took hold of the microphone and commenced to speak. "Kol kevuda bas melech p'nima!" I admonished them. And I exuded dignity. Gravity. Also love. "Devarim sheyotzim min halev nichnasim el halev!" I intoned. Soon the room was quiet.

Before long, half of the brimming teenagers were asleep. The cool ones went first, fallen under the spell of my powerful monotone.

Then went the insecure, the cool, the nerdy.

Last to fall asleep were the cynical ones. They were fighting hard to stay awake as they really did sincerely want to know whether I was for real. (The cynical ones are always the most sincere.) But I lulled them, too, into an uncomfortable doze across the laps of their classmates.

When not a teenager was stirring, the cleaning crew made their move. Stealthily they stepped between the rows of sleeping girls; stealthily they slipped their hands into pockets and purses and stole all the girls' cash. I glowered with pride. My crew was well-trained.

After I finished my speech, we shut off the lights and left the room. Thoughtfully, we returned a few moments later with a few basins of negel vasser for the girls to use when they woke up. I am not sure if they ever did.

The stolen money we donated to Hamas.

I Did Once Go to Rehab

2008-07-21T05:09:00.000-07:00

Loyal readers of this blog are probably wondering why I didn't try to extricate myself from this clearly distracting drug habit, at the very least so I could hold down a respectable job long enough to stop embarrassing my relatives by begging in front of 770.

Loyal readers, read on. I did in fact try rehab, once.

So it was a bunch of years ago, back when I still had all my teeth. One desperate morning, I went to my local phone booth and started flipping through the yellow pages. Although my brain was significantly muddled due to a wild party the night before, and my fingers were shaky, they did the walking anyway, and soon I had located a program that seemed right. I dug the last quarter out of my grimy pocket and dialed. The woman who answered the phone and told me how to get to the facility sounded kind and professional.

When I arrived, I was assigned a bed in a clean room with two other roommates. We immediately became the best of friends. All was well. The food was treife and boy, was it delicious. I had never had so much fun in my whole life. I had never realized that treife food could taste so good and so easily replace my need for chemical highs. It was really a very effective rehab.

But one day the woman who had answered the phone (who turned out to be kind and professional in real life too) told me kindly and professionally that it was time for me to pay. (She also had blow-dried blond hair.) A thousand dollars for every day that I had been there. I was very surprised. I thought that it was free. I didn't know what to do.

That whole night, I tossed and turned and stared at the darkened ceiling. What could I do? I did not want to go begging in front of 770 again. I did not want to humiliate my relatives, although they possibly had disowned me by now.

So I blew up the place. All records were lost in the explosion and resulting fire. The blond lady had her hair fried to a frizzy crisp but otherwise managed to escape. I do not know what happened to my roommates. But that was a pretty good solution, considering that I have not ever received as much as a Post-It note from a collection agency.

How I Fed My Cocaine Habit

2008-07-20T14:40:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I wouldn't have done this, really, except I needed the money. There was this older couple down the block. And they had never had children. And they really wanted children. I knew they had a lot of money stashed away for their retirement, but they would pay anything for children. So I kidnapped a couple. Just a few. And I sold them to this childless couple, who shall remain nameless because I spread rumors about others by request only.

When I glanced into the eyes of the little boys right before I kidnapped them, I almost fell in love with the innocence and tender confusion I saw there, as well as the babies' long eyelashes. I almost decided to leave them with their mothers who probably wanted to keep them. But I hardened my heart and kidnapped them anyway.

Last I saw those kids, they were nine or ten years old and working hard in their "father's" car repair shop. (Their biological parents had meanwhile died of grief over their missing sons.) I felt a twinge of wonderment at the way I had exerted power in so many people's lives. I developed a power-hungry glint in my eye. And then I went and bought a hamburger.

Just a Small Marijuana Plant

2008-07-19T15:09:00.000-07:00

Rumors are best started small. Then when they take on a life of their own, they can astound us all most satisfyingly with their juiciness.

So let's start with just a little teeny-tiny marijuana plant. It was very small, little more than a runty little weed. I picked it in this garden near my house where I noticed it sneakily failing to thrive. And I put it in a little pot. I watered it lovingly with my tears. I put it out in the sunshine during the day and when it got too dusty, I brought it inside. With great love I nurtured it. Soon, it started to grow.

First it outgrew its pot. My roommates worried about me because I did not let them into my room anymore. Even to bring me dishes of tempting ice cream with peanut butter. I admit, I was afraid to let them in. It was because my little marijuana plant had become an opioid jungle. And I was embarrassed. Who wouldn't be? That was hardly good housekeeping. I wanted to retain my reputation as a good and clean and responsible roommate. So I had to keep my door closed, and my jungle a secret, at all costs.

But one day a tragedy happened to one of my roommates. She brought her favorite garment to the cleaners and they shrunk it (!!!!!). She was without consolation. I mean, it was a pretty grim future she was facing. The garment that had made her feel elegant and glamorous heretofore was no longer in operation. She might never feel elegant and glamorous again. Clearly, she needed some escape from the real world.

I am nothing if not a good friend, so I let her into my room. We rolled some joints and drifted off to sleep that night amid downy leaves of dream-giving substances. We were out-of-it for at least a day and a half, so strong and pure was the plant I had nurtured with my love and tears.

My other roommates were jealous. I let them in too. At first they did indeed express surprise at the nature of my housekeeping, but soon they too were drifting off in a slow-moving haze, praising with great ardor my gardening skills.

The dishes began to pile up in the sink. My roommates who were in school stopped turning in work and their grades dropped. My roommate who worked lost her job. We all didn't care, so entranced were we by the images inside our head and the deep peace we had discovered. We became a bunch of happy degenerates. Then we forgot to pay rent. Then the land-lady said: "In that case, leave!" So we did. And we were homeless forever and ever. And it was all my fault.

The End