Hello, my name is Lon, and I’m a Dotaholic.

I don’t remember just when my particular private nightmare started, but I recall the turning leaves outside my window with an uncountable remorse even to this day. Back then, in the beginning, I would always buy LOADS more Halloween candy than necessary. The reason for that was the little boxes of "Dots" that were in the big bags of tootsie rolls, suckers, and orange-wrapped peanut-butter thingies. They were gum-drop type candies, made of hard jelly, like Ju-Ju's, but not so tough that they would pull the fillings from your teeth. I loved the Dots.

I would go through the bags of candy before Halloween evening, and take out all the little boxes of Dots and hide them away, so that no one would give any to the little ghouls in the porchlight by mistake. And later, as I built miniture skyscrapers out of the boxes in the privacy of my study, I would feel the exhilaration of anticipation, just shaking them to hear the soft clatter of the gummy jewels inside.

I’m afraid that my behavior was not always as it should have been when it came to the Dots. I would lie to my wife about how many I had eaten; tell my own children that they were all gone, when my desk drawer still held my sugary stash. I found myself eating Dots alone, hiding in the semi-dark of empty rooms, as the rest of the family slept, their noses twitching in unconscious recognition of the fruit aroma of my addiction.

Dots became my Halloween crack. As the weeks neared the season of Turkey-day, my reserve of Dots would begin to dwindle, plunging me into the depths of despair, as I knew the mind-numbing depravation of abstinence loomed before me, unavoidable as an iceberg in the path of my post-Halloween Titanic. I tried to ration the remaining boxes, but unopened, they called my name on sleepless nights. The Dots, even then turning hard with the rigor of age, pulled my hands into their hiding places. I found myself making lame excuses on the phone to clients who wondered at my lack of progress on their projects while absent-mindedly arranging tiny desk-top battlefield dioramas of green and red gummy soldiers, with the rare red gummy officers standing bravely in front. They invaribly marched to oblivion within my waiting maw.

Finally, in the lonely drizzle of a December afternoon as I stood in a dingy alley behind Kratzenheimer’s Kandy Kupboard, trying vainly to sell my grandmother’s glass eye to passersby, I knew I had to seek professional help.

I now stand here before you, a changed man. A man rescued from the brink of moral bankruptcy, from the threshold of a wasted life, from the sugar-sparkled world of Dot dependency. I have been Dot-free for two years, and I have begun the long climb back to respectability. Thank you all for your understanding and acceptance.

-- Diabetic posterchild Lon (lgal@exp.net), November 01, 2004

Answers

Even the tips of my fingers were sweating as I desperately jabbed at the numbers on the phone. When oh, when will I learn to put the number of the support line on speed dial? The voice was casually professional on the other end; one of the young students that volunteer for this duty, just to gain insight into the substance-depraved brain.

“Hello, Dots help line”. They always say that, even they never help me get any Dots. I guess it’s somewhat nicer than saying, “O K you loser, spill your guts to me”.

The walls of my room are beginning to melt, all the sweet-cream icing running down into the blue depths of the carpet. I briefly consider putting some birthday candles into a pool by my feet.

“Yeah, it’s me again.”

“Hello, Lon, having the dreams again, are we?”

“No, no, it’s worse this time, you know it was just, it was..... Halloween last night.” The saliva in my mouth had turned to quick setting plaster of Paris, my teeth began to revolve in their sockets.

“We know, Lon, don’t feel like you’re alone in this; our phones have been ringing off the hook. Now talk to me, O K?” I hated it when they asked me to talk; I mean I called them didn’t I, of course I would talk!

“Well,” my throat constricted as the plaster of Paris set up in my vocal chords, my voice sounding like the screech of goblins as they cried trick or treat in my fevered dreams. The room had begun to breathe; an asthmatic wheeze that bulged the windows with each labored inhalation. I swallowed and tried again. “Weeeelllll, it was all right until this guy, you know he had a whole movie box of them, you know unopened, (my voice took on a sinister hiss) vvvvirrrginnnn.........”

The voice on the other end knew the situation called for reinforcements. “A movie theater box? Oh, Lon, a WHOLE box? No wonder you’re feeling blue. Just hold on, I’m gonna get my supervisor, O K?”

Feeling blue? FEELING BLUE??!!!!! I was feeling blue the way that Jack the Ripper was feeling like a night on the town! There was the headlight of an oncoming train in a tunnel where the fireplace had been, and from somewhere I heard the voice of Eve, saying, “Ooooooh baby, just one little bite won’t hurt nothing”.

While the team on the other end of the empty phone line scurried and conferred, and whispered to each other, or maybe called their own help line, I turned once again to the keyboard which floated inches above the liquid surface of my desk. My fingers skidded among the keys, now inscribed with Egyptian hieroglyphs, my four-inch claws leaving little holes in the plastic faces. If only I could reach Walter. If only........If only he still has the box........

-- torturedoldlon (haunted house@the.bayou), November 01, 2004.

The lights of the police cruisers flashed blurred reflections on the wet surface of the pavement - red and blue, red and blue, over and over again, like the restless ghosts of Dots squished in holiday traffic. A thin and pasty-faced young officer, his department issue uniform hanging loosely on his frame like a hastily stuffed policeman scarecrow, wiped the mixture of mist and sweat from his prematurely receding hairline and held open the door of the little shop for his superior.

“Geeze, Sarge, I don’t know. I mean, it looks like, like someone just chewed his way in here. You know, GNAWED right through the back door. I know it sounds crazy, but that ain’t the half of it.”

The Sargent was rotund, bearing a girth which was the undeniable legacy of countless late shift burgers or half-price pizza and his habitual coffee with extra cream, delivered by a succession of smiling young waitresses at Dottie’s Delight Diner. His unironed shirt strained at the buttons, and the toes of his black crepe-soled shoes had ancient purple stains from the drips of generations of jelly donuts. He paused at the open doorway and his large head swiveled on that part of his shoulders where his neck would have been, to look sadly at his youthful minion.

“Please, Calvin, please tell me that you did not say “gnawed”. We have no little box for “gnawed” on the breaking-and-entering form. We have no little box for “gnawed” on the burglary report. The Chief will not be happy with “gnawed”. Please tell me that is not what you said.”

The young man’s Adam’s apple bobbed rapidly up and down, throwing a droplet of collected drizzle onto the billowing cloth of his shirt front. His eyes darted repeatedly from the sergeant’s face to the dimly lit interior of the ransacked business, like a tensed pointer alerting his master to a hidden quail.

The big man clicked on his eight-cell maglight, which was slightly dented from a recent “discussion” involving a 300 pound transvestite cabby and a trunk full of stolen size 13 Manolo stilettos. He held the light blindingly in Calvin’s face momentarily, then sighed and walked through the doorway, into a scene straight out of Willy Wonka’s worst nightmare.

“Holy Mother’s bunions! How many fatalities do we have? This place looks like an atom bomb went off in a confetti factory.”

The blue scarecrow, slow to catch that Sarge wasn’t really asking about fatalities, gushed in a voice which was a level too loud for the close quarters and two octaves too high for his solemn duty of a public defender.

“No, no, Sarge, nobody was killed, or even hurt, and get this - the money is still in the cash register!” As if to prove his veracity, he reached into the open till and held up a fist full of five dollar bills. “And there’s the door I told you about, with a big hole chewed right in the middle of it!” he dropped the bills, and loped stiffly over to the rear door, his hands clutching his gun and handcuffs at his waist. It was his first burglary scene.

“Well, son, that does look like nothing I ever saw before. I got an idea; while you’re dashing around here, obliterating any evidence we might have, whyn’t you call old man Kratzenhiemer and tell him to get down here. Maybe something else is missing. You know something, .... ELSE.”

As the young policeman went to call the owner of the candy emporium, Sarge just stood in the middle of the floor, in the middle of a sea of little yellow boxes. Little yellow boxes with pictures of the gummy drop confections he remembered from childhood evenings, sitting on his mother’s bed and sorting the loot from a successful Halloween. Dozens of little yellow boxes emblazoned with a single word, “Dots”. Dozens of EMPTY little yellow boxes. The big man’s eyes fluttered involuntarily, and as he surreptitiously flicked a tear from his cheek, pinching his nose as if it was suddenly cold, he whispered to himself, “What kind of man does this; what kind of monster are we dealing with?”

-- I didn't do it! (Lon on@the.run), November 01, 2004.

He's been so good

As he knows he should

But now's no time for braggin'

'Cos Halloween just proved too much

And he's fallen off the wagon.

He's eaten things

On the no-no list

And his sugar level's high

But we understand that sweet, sweet call

And never ask him "Why?".

-- Carol (sweet@tooth.com), November 02, 2004.

LOL! Good one, Carol. I guess one poem deserves another, eh?

-------

On the other side of the world, the sun was just coming up, bloated and orange in the haze of the city. The first light was beginning to give definition to the left over gaiety of last night’s celebration of All Hallow’s Eve; the litter of trampled candy, an abandoned mask, it’s ghoul face welcoming the sun with empty eyes. At the top of a prestigious highrise the phone began to ring in an office paneled in dark walnut. A manicured hand lifted the receiver, the ring on it’s pinky finger dulling clicking against the plastic. As the first beam of morning flickered upon the golden image inlaid into the ring, an image of a society as old as mankind itself, a cultured but monotone voice broke the cathedral silence of morning.

“Yes.”

The voice on the other end was old. A voice aged by the weight of vigilance, exhausted by the assurance of ever-present danger. The voice of the Watcher.

“He’s surfaced again.”

The hand tightened it’s grip on the phone, causing the ring to reflect it’s image onto the nearby curtains. An image of gold on a background of blood red - how appropriate for the moment, thought the ring’s wearer.

“I’ll get my things. Six hours.”

The hand replaced the phone so softly, that no sound reflected off the polished desk top. No sound, that is, except for the soft thrubbing of her heart. A sound like no other - at least on this planet.

-- Lon (here@we.goagain), November 03, 2004.

Helen Bee Mebs, Director of the Advanced Defense Research Agency (ADRO) looked at her fax machine expectantly; the words of her phone conversation still ringing in her ears.

“He’s surfaced again.”

It had to be a mistake. “He” couldn’t really be back, could he?

Detective Ronald Brooks was as reliable as any agent in the field, but he must be mistaken this time.

Helen’s thoughts were interrupted at the sound of the fax machine starting up. The image was coming over now. Brooks said it was obtained by the local police just a few hours earlier from a burglarized candy store’s surveillance cam. The image was fuzzy at best. Brooks couldn’t be sure if it was HIM or not, but it sure looked like it, and he wanted Helen herself to check it out.

There was also one other thing. Everyone knew, with certainty, that HE was insane and prone to doing insane things. And the story here fit; a whole candy factory had been robbed but the only thing taken--- or perhaps ‘eaten’ would be a better word--- were the numerous packages of DOTS candy and part of a door of all things. Not a single DOT remained. Very suspicious. Also very crazy. Just like something HE would do.

All of these thoughts went through Helen’s mind as she looked in confusion at the blurred image from her fax. The face was partially averted. Still, it looked like it could be HIM.

Brooks would be here in 6 hours with the original film and they would have to ‘run it’--- perform the special software enhancements to make it clearer. For now, there was nothing else to do but wait for Brooks. This image was just too fuzzy to be sure of an identity.

But if it was HIM, Helen Bee Mebs could be certain that they all were about to start on another crazy adventure.

In only a few hours they would know.

-- Fudge and other yummies wanted please (FRLian@fiction.writer), November 04, 2004.

And he fades back, back.....it's a long pass......AND IT'S CAUGHT BY #13, ROBBIE REDSOX!!! It looks like he's in the clear and off and going folks. I'm afraid it's all over but the crying!

-- Lon (lgal@exp.net), November 05, 2004.

Well done Lon. You are truly a great fisherman.

Does this mean you'll have time to finish your Eclipse story now or are you saving it for publishing purposes?

Hi Rob. Glad you're back. I look forward to your next installment.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), November 06, 2004.

...wiping spewed milk offa th'screen ...

-- helen (mule@blew.snot.all.over.th.barn), November 06, 2004.

I'm willing to share my chocolate chip cookies for a story, Rob! I know they're not home made because what with preparing for the Africa trip (I leave this week!) there's no time for baking. But I do have some peanut butter to spread on the bottom of them :-)

As an aside, any theories as to why no one manufactures peanut butter chocolate chip cookies? They're my favorite cookie and the only way I can get them is to make them myself or spread peanut butter on the bottom of bought chocolate chip ones (which just isn't the same as cooking it in). I mean they make Reece's Peanut butter cups and that isn't anywhere near as good. (And she's off and ranting again!)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telsupalnet.ent), November 07, 2004.

Mule snot and spewed milk? I ask for yummies and that's what I get? Well that doesn't inspire me at all.

Oh! What's this I see? Some yummy chocolate cookies with peanut butter? Mmmmm. That's more like it. OK, since you are going to the big "A" dear and sweet Princess, I'll continue the story upon your return. Have a safe trip and let me know when you get back. Bye till then.

-- (FRLianwriter@poopie.snottymilk???), November 07, 2004.

ROB!!!!

What do you mean, after Trish get's back from Africa?! Why, she's liable to get her head shrunk, or, or end up as the main ingredient in a homemade receipe for Canadian tourist gumbo, fer cryin' out loud. And what about the rest of us then, huh? We would mourn for a day or two, sure, but then where would we be? We'd be without no story, that's where!

So, Trish, I'd say be very carefull, especially if someone invites you to a hot tub party, and they're buying carrots and potatoes at the time, and do NOT wear that perfume named "Main Course". Also, if someone offers to take you to their "shrink", well just think twice about it OK.

-- Lon Frankenstien (bwanna@the.bayou), November 07, 2004.

I hope your trip all goes to plan Tricia. I expect you will have some interesting stories to tell when you get back. Have a great time.

Rob, we will try to be very patient. Waiting...............8-)

-- Carol (c@oz.com), November 09, 2004.

PS Did Tricia mention how long she would be away?

-- Carol (c@oz.com), November 15, 2004.

Hmm I don't know if she said when she'd be back.

-- (FRLian@fiction.writer), November 16, 2004.

When I wrote the post I had some free time, and Lon was about to go on the road for a few days I think, but he said he might be able to post some more before too long.

-- (FRLian@fiction.writer), November 16, 2004.

School is almost out. Will try to write then.

-- helen (scholarly@mule.for.hire), November 19, 2004.

Brooks strode into the office as Helen rose out of her chair to meet him, a cup of steaming coffee in her hands.

He handed her the original photo. She looked carefully at it, then put it down on her desk and picked up a container of milk to stir into her coffee. She began pouring it into the cup and then looked up at Brooks, about to speak.

It was then that it happened.

Helen clasped her hand to her chest as she felt a sudden stabbing pain. The pain got worse.

Much worse.

She couldn’t breath at all! Surprise and fear painted her features as her knees bent with weakness. She collapsed onto the carpeted floor. Brooks was horrified. He saw her face, drained of color, eyes wide, in what could only be described as astonishment. He quickly bent down, grabbed her from underneath, lifted her, and carried her the short distance to the couch on the other side of her office.

Brooks was a strong man. He had seen death before. And he knew, with certainty, that Helen was gone.

Gone forever.

He would never, as long as he lived, get the image of her dying out of his mind. From now on, whenever he thought of Helen, he would again see the awful image---

her already-dead body splayed on the floor---

n a puddle of spewed milk---

a bubble of snot hanging from one nostril.

It was not the Helen he would have wanted to remember. His only consolation was that at least no one else had seen her that way. They would remember her better.

There would be no more adventures.

Ever again.

-- (FRLian.@fiction.writer), November 22, 2004.

And you were expecting yummies from Helen?

LOL Rob. You've got my attention. I predict a mammoth twist in the tale. Or were you just checking if anyone's out there?

-- Carol (c@oz.com), November 23, 2004.

Rob asked (nicely) for yummies and Helen gave him spewed milk and snot instead. Evidently Rob was a bit dissapointed by this, and so he killed Helen in the story. Forever.

Judging by that last post, I guess he lost whatever inspiration he had to begin with and has no intention of writing anything else in the future.

-- (MikeRoberts@lter.ego), November 23, 2004.

*Gayla jumps back into the forum with some warm, delicious fudge for Rob*

There, there.... have all you want.... and see to it that Brooks gives Helen mouth-to-mouth before it's too late, OK?

Lon, I am pleased to meet a man who understands my addiction to chocolate. Only someone with a TRUE addiction could describe it the way you did:

"I would lie to my wife about how many I had eaten; tell my own children that they were all gone, when my desk drawer still held my sugary stash. I found myself eating Dots alone, hiding in the semi- dark of empty rooms, as the rest of the family slept"

Classic, absolutely classic!

Could we have some more story? Pretty please with DOTS on top?

I didn't know Trisha was heading to Afica! How exciting! (See my whining thread for why I haven't been around.) I hope you have a great trip!

Carol, your poem was terrific!!! How are you? Are you heading into summer now? (I'm freezing to death over here.)

Gosh I missed you guys!

(((((((((((((((FRLians)))))))))))))))))))

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), November 23, 2004.

Africa even. LOL

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), November 23, 2004.

And before I forget, size 13 stilettos? Really? Wow! I can't imagine...

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), November 23, 2004.

Oh Rob, never say never. If it's any help I've got chocs with strong coffee centres. Yum. Please have some.

Yes Gayla, we're finally getting some warm weather. I almost feel human again. I hope it's not too icy where you are. You'll have to get some "Long Johns" (warm undies).

-- Carol (c@oz.com), November 25, 2004.

A mammoth with a twist, please, Bartender. Shaken, snot stirred.

Whassa dot? Whassa beer nut?

I always ask my wife to make me chocolate chip cookies, but sometimes she makes me those peanut butter ones with chocolate chips. They're no good for dipping in milk, and I like the others better. Store- bought Reese's peanut butter cups are okay, and she sometimes makes these delicious chocolate-covered peanut butter concoctions on a cookie sheet (to cool, I think, rather than to bake) about the size of misshapen Hershey's kisses. These are heavenly and I gorge on them the way Ol Lon takes to Dots (whatever they are), but I don't like peanut butter cookies. Maybe it's the lack of intensity of taste, or maybe it's the texture, I don't know. Just don't care for 'em.

I'll take my chocolate straight for the most part. Strong black and ... well. Hold the milk chocolate and the wheat toast, you treebark huggin', French water chuggin' Caspers. Connect the dots, you freaks whose habits require you to gnaw down the doors of sweet innocents to feed your feindish habit and endanger good officers like Helen with your sugar-high induced temporary madness. Poor girl, her gizzard gave out, I suppose at the shock of the enhanced image of such wanton wanting. The big man should follow the advice whispered hoarsly from deep in the throat of the shadow in the parking garage: "Follow the cavities." Canvass the dental assistants. And lose a few pounds, it might pan out like a sheet of your ex-wifes cookies. (Have you SEEN some of those dental assistants?)

Where was I? Oh, yes, and I heard there's a load of Peruvian Dots comin' in tonight. Pier 12. Midnight. The plot thickens like the swirling fog off the so-called water of the Ship Channel lying silent there in the dark, thick with the answers to many a question, sticky among the jetsam with the residue of the refineries whose lights come and go, now sharp, now obscured, occasionally glittering with a gently bobbing beam from some packing crate or dock, a Dot-bloated body dark with the residue of old diesel, appearing and disappearing on the slow tide like some spectre of sugar-coated death straining to break through the plasticbaglike surface and show you what self- destruction really looks like. "Hoiman," he yells to the good-for- nothing apprentice in the shack, his voice breaking loud in the muffled stillness where everything sounds close, but nothing really is. "Yeah." "Bring da hook. Somethin' 'ere I wanna take a look at."

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), November 26, 2004.

Lol J. Stirred snot and jetsam with no flotsam.

Pier 12 at midnight sounds like the sort of place hubby and I used to fish at overnight when we were much younger. Spooky places where you wouldn't want to know what was floating on the oily black water. I wouldn't be game to do it now.

All this talk of snot reminds me of the days I worked in the abbattoirs canteen. The lovely iced custard squares we sold were always referred to as "snot blocks". Gross eh!.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), November 26, 2004.

(gasp) NO! NO!! Not the hook!!!!

(carry on!)

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), November 28, 2004.

"Yeah, here." The kid hands it over awkwardly, so it's hard to get a grip on. "Some people can't do the simplest thing right," the old longshoreman thinks, a brief snapshot of himself as a younger man flashing across his mind, a young man with muscles and coordination who handed things to his betters in such a way as to make their jobs easier and not harder. He sighed and concentrated on the gentle heaving of the water. "THERE!" Herman yelled, almost scaring the arthritic old man right out into the slimy depth. "Holy... You idyot!" the old man yelled. "You tryin' ta scare me ta deaf? You could kill a man lyke that. Sheesh. You don even know what yer lookin fer." He turned back to the water, trying to get back into the trance that such dim intuitive work required. A quiet, distracted "idyot" passed his lips unnoticed by either party. Ah. There. He pushed the long pole over the irregular lump that swelled the surface with a softness unlike the floating end of the angular beam and then pulled back sharply to catch it with the hook. The slimy lump rotated, pushing the pole back a little and rolling toward him in obscure slow motion, a shoulder followed by a limp arm, then the chest, not so dark as the sooty back, clammy wet, white as a ghost, but softly tangible. "Call the law, Hoiman." the old man said gently. The presence of death called forth a certain respect in the old man, stoic but sympathetic. He was, after all, old, and he knew it. But the boy was already gone, gone to the othere side of the pier to do a little heaving of his own. The sandwich pilfered while the old man was out checking the lines wasn't so good coming up as it had been going down in the glee of his disrespect which he thought of incorrectly as humor. He wouldn't know it until later, but the pale dead face with its strands of oily streaks like hair and its oddly outsized pimples and its obscenely gleeful grin from teeth clinched hard even in death to hold in cheeks stuffed with Dots like a squirrels--he wouldn't know until later that the face and the taste of the old man's sandwich would haunt him in the lonely night watches through middle age.

The coroner, ever sharp for mischief, simply shook his head and said to his own apprentice, "Not drowning." Then, later, "Not foul play, though someone may have intended it that way. We'll probably never know about that unless the police turn up something we don't see here." "What, then?" The trainee's patience was not yet ready for the strain of this job. "Well," the coroner said slowly, bending to double-check some tissue in the area of the throat, "How he came to be in the water, I don't know, but he died of an allergy to Dots." He shook his head. "Sometimes allergies are like that. You may be around something all your life, then, all of a sudden, you have a violent allergic reaction, maybe from overload or something. I mean, we got two pounds from his stomach alone. I guess it was just shock, once the reaction set in. And in that volume..." He shook his head again, covered the grinning face and began to take off his gloves, nodding to his assistant to hand him the clipboard and pen.

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), November 29, 2004.

Two POUNDS of DOTS? OMG!

*Popping popcorn and settling in for some more story*

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), November 30, 2004.

That's a goodie J. Death by dots. You guys have more writing talent than a lot of published authors.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), December 01, 2004.

Gayla you may hav to eat that popcorn watchin the news. Considerin everbodies contribushun, I think the only one lef alive in this tail o wo is Brooksie. Altho I gess we aint covered dottid swiss dot coms an the womans name Dot yet. Izzat Row bair toe playin peekaboo in the weeds? He mite be able ta reevive somethin with all them puns lurkin about. Somehow. Othern some heeroic effert im afraid this uns a goner. I wonder if Brooke was named after her outlaw great unkle deetective Brooks. She mite be able ta relay us some o his undoutablee advenchursome advenchurs.

Carol dont encurrage em. There hard enuff to get along with now.

-- Redneck (redneck@lookin.in), December 01, 2004.

No more stories? :-(

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), December 03, 2004.

Sorry Redneck I just love their stories. Where else could you get tales on such a variety of subjects, written with wonderful humour and style, from such a diverse group of writers. I doubt there's such a witty collection published anywhere.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), December 04, 2004.

Hay i didn say nobodyud be writin no more i just said this dot thaing mite be dead since most o thuh karikters was and it upeers ta have reesolved itsef so to speak. Yall make me sound like some kinda killjoy fer notissin. Somebody crank out a story quik an git me offa thuh bulls i ok. Wait a minit. If the dot thaings a story line thats dead then the geeomitrees all messed up somehow. Unnless. Aw fergit it. I aint no fizishun with a syst guy you no. Now you got me all mixed up. Im jist sayin far be it frum me that i shud udder thuh infamus discurrajin word.

-- Redneck (redneck@listen.up), December 04, 2004.

Lol Redneck. Don't get your knickers in a knot. I wasn't having a go at you. I was just replying to "Carol dont encurrage em. There hard enuff to get along with now." 8-)

The trouble with this form of communication is the change of nuance in a post. Coupled with the subtle differences in our use of the English language it can lead to misunderstandings. That is probably why I enjoy your posts so much because I can "hear" the accent and imagine how a Redneck sounds.

-- Carol (c@oz.com), December 04, 2004.

Someone has said (though I think they were speaking of England and the U.S.) that we were a people divided by a common language.

Regards the instance at hand, Redneck already says Lon and I are "encourageable." But I think he means "incorrigible." That's probably what he was talking about, thinking we consider ourselves his betters (which, of course, we are) and that every compliment swells our already swollen heads. (Only kidding--Redneck has his good qualities. I've written elsewhere just what they are. I think.)

As to dialect, Redneck's is kind of lower (class) Middle to East Texas, though I have encountered people with like accents from other parts of the State. But "a redneck" has a variable accent and the label probably applies more to one's attitudes about certain things including personal independence and responsibility (yeah, I know, our Redneck sometimes shies away from that last word altogether), the land, family and what he percieves as threats to them be they political or social or physical. Little things including one's mode of transportation (pickup preferred), taste in food (bbq and anything with gravy preferred-generally in quantity), dress (boots without zippers preferred), and treatment of womenfolk (with deference)are all good indications that one may be observing a redneck. They are a distinct breed somehow closer to the earth and to their grandparents' times (or the last century--or the one before that!) than their own time. The label has popularly come to have racial overtones. This is lamentable and partly because some of them are, as I said, throwbacks with roots in a less enlightened time. But mostly it is because they pretty much reject the whole concept of political correctitude which siezes upon any hint of bigotry, real, imagined or contrived. Most are rough tradesmen and work closer to the earth than is the norm nowadays, though many also come up through the ranks and are refreshingly candid voices in boardrooms and business meetings.

Redneck as a generality is as indefinable and uncertain as "liberal" or "conservative." Our image of the label never quite fits the individual, and by labelling him, we try to conform him too early to our often erroneous ideas of who he is. As far as I know, the term "redneck" might have originated in the '60's when they were seen as the cultural counterbalance to the hippie movement. It probably originated with someone making fun of the sunburned necks of rural people who worked outside and who could therefore (in the mind of their critics) know nothing of poetry, politics or elitist intellectual pursuits. In Redneck's case, the accent fits and reinforces the truth of his rural roots and regional attitudes.

I have myself been immediately labelled a "no-neck" upon someone learning that I played high school football, and the term carries a certain dumb-jock connotation. Labels are all right, so long as they are carefully thought out, broadly defined and and not too firmly attached. In some ways, I like being a no-neck or a redneck or whatever. But in other ways they are handy handles to pigeonhole a person, never a good practice. Labeled people have a way of surprising us with unexpected dimensions.

Thinking of language and how it can confuse or enlighten us brings to mind the Tower of Babel from Genesis Chapter 11. It is, no doubt, mere coincidence that the great and wicked city of ancient times, thought to be in the same region as the tower, was called by a name derived by adding "lon."

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), December 06, 2004.

Lon, are you going to just take that? *wink

Speaking of Rednecks... I will repost the top 25 Redneck songs just for a chuckle:

25) Git your Tongue Outta My Mouth Cuz I'm Kissin ya Goodbye

24) Her Teeth Was Stained, But Her Hart Was Pure

23) How Can I Miss Ya If You Won't Go Away?

22) I Don't Know Whether to Kill Myself Or Go Bowling

21) I Bought A Car Frum A Guy Who Stole My Girl, But It Don't Run, So We're Even

20) I Keep Furgittin' I Furgot About You

19) I Liked You Better Before I Knew You So Well

18) I Still Miss Ya Baby, But My Aim's Gittin' Better

17) I Wouldn't Take Her To A Dog Fite, Cuz I'm Afraid She'd Win

16) I'll Marry Ya Tomorrow But Let's Honeymoon Tonight

15) I'm So Miserable Without Ya, It's Like Havin' You Here

14) I've Got Tears In My Ears From Lyin' On My Back And Cryin' Over You

13) If I Can't Be Number One In Your Life, Then Number Two On You

12) If I Had Shot You When I Wanted To, I'd Be Out By Now

11) Mama Git a Hammer (There's A Fly On Papa's Head)

10) My Head Hurts, My Feet Stink, And I Don't Love You

9) My Wife Ran Off With My Best Friend, And I Sure Do Miss Him

8) Please Bypass This Heart

7) She Got The Ring and I Got The Finger

6) You Done Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat

5) You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly

4) If The Phone Don't Ring, You'll Know It's Me

3) She's Actin' Single and I'm Drinkin' Doubles

2) She's Looking Better After Every Beer

... and the number 1 Redneck song of all time. . .

1) I Haven't Gone To Bed With Any Ugly Women, But I've Sure Woke Up With A Few

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), December 09, 2004.

Shoot now you got me sniflin an remembrin. At list is so beeyuteefull an sad all at the same time like a broke down gto in a bar ditch or findin a picsher some gal gave you a long time ago in a ol skool book or somethin. I hafta go now. Shoot.

-- Redneck (redneck@hurtso.bad), December 09, 2004.

The trace said the call came from a pay phone at Houston Intercontinental Airport. The voice was scrambled by some kind of portable interference device, electronically no voice at all, but to the unaided ear easily intelligible.

"It's done. Check's in the mail. Pay as usual. You know the number."

It was logged in and sent to the proper officer, the one who had ordered the short term taps. Strange duck. They'd had to scramble a little to get it done in time, but it was a matter of authorization rather than affixing hardware these days. Easily done if you knew the right codes and people.

The day before, the receptionist had thought the old woman looked sad, but somehow uninvolved to have been the guy's grandmother. She had directed him to the Coroner himself, who had wanted to talk personally with whomever came to identify the body and pick up the effects. He had eyed her narrowly. There was something chilling about her, like a coiled spring with a cane and expensive clothes and eyes not quite observable in their recesses under slightly heavy brows, and she had kept her head bent down. For all of it, she did not have he skin of the aged, and her hair had not grown course. The hands were gloved, though it was unseasonably warm even for Houston this winter.

"Yes, that's him," she said. She signed the forms. All the other paperwork had been done by mail and FAX. He handed the manila envelope over, and noticed with some suspicion that she took it rather too eagerly, greedily almost. But people were funny. Sometimes even death didn't overcome the baser instincts in certin people. She must be hoping there's something of value in there, he thought. He felt she'd be disappointed. A wallet with the usual things and just short of a hundred bucks in assorted denominations, some pocket change, a pocket knife engraved as a gift, wristwatch cost maybe fifty bucks on sale, small ring with some keys including car keys (which was somewhat strange since they hadn't found a car)and that odd ring. The ring had been in his pocket and not on his finger, he remembered. He had ruled it accidental death. No signs of foul play, no injuries except post mortem from the fall. No evidence of trouble on the ship or dock prior to his taking a dive. Passed out dead and fell over. Simple enough. He had learned to pay attention to his nagging feelings, but this one had so little to substantiate it that he suppressed it. Not every premonition came true. Nobody could fault him on the record. His bases were covered. Still, he almost hated to give her the manila envelope. He hated even for his hand to come close enough to hers to do so. Weird crawly feeling. He was glad when she was gone.

On the sidewalk she smiled ever so slightly. After she hung up the phone, she smiled ever so slightly. Mother would be pleased. On the plane, she took off the gloves in the practiced manner of a moneyed theatre-goer, inspecting with satisfaction the elegant hands then revealed. Beautiful, she thought. A family trait. Her ring, similar but not quite the same as the one currently in the custody of the US Postal Service, shone dully in the flourescent lights. She smiled ever so slightly, and did not notice that the man whom she had hardly noticed, the one who had been sitting in the window seat and excused himself as they entered a few moments before, had talked the stewardess into letting him sit in an empty aisle seat two rows back.

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), December 13, 2004.

settling in for a story!

-- helen (mule@gets.his.blankie), December 14, 2004.

Ready and waiting here too.

-- Carol (reaching@chocs.com), December 14, 2004.

Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy!

-- Gayla (settling@in.here too), December 14, 2004.

J, that's a great start! Please don't leave us hanging too long - I might stretch ;-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), December 16, 2004.

Julie answered her cell phone on the second ring. The voice of her friend and co-worker Ronald Brooks bounced off a commercial satellite in geo-synchronous orbit about 23,000 miles above the Earth and down to her. His voice was clear, but what the voice was saying made her feel confused, even a bit disoriented.

Helen is dead---a sudden massive heart attack---ADRO is being disbanded immediately-----our ‘adventures’ are over. There will be no funeral---she’s going to Science---there’s no family---only her pet Mule---she left instructions regarding it---I’ll have to take care of that next.

Julie was shocked and heard her own voice stammering “Is sh-sh-she really dead?”

Brooks shook his head as a crazy unbidden thought entered it. A character from the Wizard of Oz was singing; “…and she’s not only merely dead, she’s really most sincerely dead.”

“Yes, Julie, she’s gone.” He remembered the image of her so clearly--- the spewed milk---the snot, her Death Face. “Give me a call when you get back in the States and I’ll tell you the whole story.”

Julie hung up in stunned disbelief and turned to Pat as if to ask if it was really true. In response, Pat looked directly into her pretty eyes and issued a single soft bark.

Brooks had one last mission now: to take care of the Mule---as Helen had requested in her ‘final instructions.’ He checked that his gun was loaded, the safety on. He would only need one bullet. He left the Pentagon and drove out to Helen’s small country home.

After arriving, he walked into the barn.

“Hello, Mike, ” he said calmly, as if talking to an old friend.

The Mule sneezed loudly, snot bubbles all over its face now. Somehow, it seemed appropriate, Brooks thought.

So passes Helen Bee Mebs, Head of the Advanced Defense and Research Organization---and her little Mule too.

-- The End of the "SAGA" (sonofdust@good.bye), December 18, 2004.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Don't shoot the mule!

I'm gonna send the TinMan after you with his axe!

You wicked witch!

*Gayla cries*

-- Gayla (privacy@please.com), December 18, 2004.

The mule!

-- Robert & Jean Cook (somwherein@GA.com), December 19, 2004.

"Oh, George. Not the livestock."

-- J (jsnider@hal-pc.org), December 19, 2004.

I suppose a Christmas Miracle would be too much to hope for?

-- Carol (lost@translation.com), December 23, 2004.

By definition, no member of the livestock can be knocked off. (Else they'ed no longer be livestock!)

Than again, can the mule be knocked-up vice knocked off?

-- Robert & Jean Cook (mulein@rouge.LA), December 23, 2004.