This one is dedicated to my brother’s roommate Rusty, who regaled me over beers on Saturday night with tidbits of stories I had written, adding “that was funny” at the end of each and reminding me why I like to write this stuff. I didn’t know you were such a fan. The autographed 8×10 glossy is in the mail. There might also be a band-aid in there, but that was an accident. So throw the band-aid away and keep the picture. Do not eat the band-aid. Call me if you get confused.

When I check my t-mail (that’s tangible mail. E-mail is now just called “mail”), I get lots of cool junk. People pay me to be awesome, so there are the checks from that. Then there are the requests from the government for most of that money, the pre-approved offers for very high interest life-ruining loans, bills from faceless companies that provide services like cable, electricity, escorts, therapy, and phone service. Then there are the coupons.

The VALU-PAK. Proclaiming on the envelope “Over $600 in $aving$!” My God, how exciting.

Should I ever choose to go to a store that sells scrapbooking supplies, rest assured that I can save up to 20% on acid free paper. Oh yes. Pedicure? The biggest problem used to be the price. Now that it is $29.99, I only have to worry about keeping my homosexuality a secrest. (I meant to type “secret” there, but somehow “secrest” works.) Dinner at McDisgusting-fried-animal-in-a-bag is now not only a huge risk, but affordable as well. A 22-piece bucket of fried monkey assholes is an astounding $4.99. Now that’s a bargain.

And then I turned the page to find the doll.

If this isn’t the most disturbing thing you have ever seen, I am sorry you had to witness your parents having sex with your dead sister. For the rest of us it’s a benchmark.

For a paltry $25.00 (paltre’zque $32 Canadian), you can be creeped out every day for the rest of your life.

Meet William- Someone’s ill-conceived testament to the idea that a newborn baby can be considered cute by anyone other than its parents. I have seen a newborn live and in person. Although delicious, they ain’t pretty unless you are the mother or father, and even then the beauty is more a function of “Sweet merciful Christ I can’t believe this is a tiny human beginning its life” than “Oh how beautiful I bet these fuckers would sell if we made them out of plastic.”

Love the description, too. Jeezus. He’s made of life-like vinyl and comes complete with wrinkly knees, eyelashes matted together with real placental matter, inexplicably chapped lips, and a pube on his back. All of the things that make him “a joy to hold close!”*

The person who created William managed to ignore the fact that every doll manufactured since the beginning of dolldom was designed to look like it was somewhere between 6 months and 22 years old.

Lil’ Betsy Wetsy does not have an 86 year-old Pauly Prostate/Connie Colostomy counterpart. You think there might be a reason for that? Maybe because humans are only worth looking at for the first 25 years or so, starting after their head assumes a normal shape. Sure, there is the exception who manages to hang on to their looks into their 30s or 40s, but the only context in which you will see a doll that age will involve the words “Show the court where daddy made you kiss him”.

Collective shudder.

So, what’s been going on? Didja’ miss me? Yeah, there’s the Atlanta Illustrated stuff to read every week, but the Tornado is like that special place behind my bed where I cry at night when I can’t make the centipedes in my brain stop screaming- the warmingly familiar intersection of torture and comfort. I miss it here. Even if my comments pages are now mostly ads for cock drugs and online blackjack, I’m back in a sweaty heap that is more hulking, sarcasticker, less observant of the rules of grammar, and more redundanter than ever. Not necessarily every week, but none of this once a month crap. So shut your mouth holes.

I’m adjusting to some changes in my life that are more good than bad (nothing cool like rehab, menopause, surviving cancer, or killing a homeless guy (although that was fun and educational)…much less interesting and not worth describing). As with any disruption of the norm, this requires a “getting back into the groove” period. You start putting the most essential parts in first, just to make sure they all fit and still operate correctly, and then you add in the other stuff until you figure out a way to make it all work again.

I am ashamed to admit that seeking humor in the commonplace was one of the last ones. I almost forgot how necessary that was in the effort to avoid snapping and chainsawing a bunch of people.

And I have a fucking gross looking late-term abortion doll to thank for it.

Not Rusty, the other one.

*Somewhere a chick with a lot of cats and a barren womb is holding William, tears falling silently on her muumuu. You know this is true, so stop laughing.

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