Oh, Lord, not defenestrated. That’s too horrible to contemplate.
I was editing a wire story about the Romanian Revolution in 1989 when I came to a sentence that said two men had been defenestrated.
Defenestrated! I had no idea what the word meant, but it smacked of some complicated medieval torture – perhaps being flayed, boiled in oil and drawn and quartered simultaneously.
I checked the dictionary, and it turned out that defenestration means being thrown from a window.
I’m opposed to being thrown from a window, but it sure sounds better than being defenestrated.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Captain Kangaroo, evil, and me
Who could believe that Captain Kangaroo had a demonic nature that was repeatedly revealed on his kiddie TV show – that he was a moral monster, reveling in his lack of empathy, finding pleasure in the unceasing torment of a helpless being?
I could. Captain Kangaroo was my introduction to the stunning malevolence that can lurk beneath an exterior as charming as Stalin’s smile.
Dancing Bear, a shuffling, human-like, furry creature, was a staple on the program I watched every weekday morning as a child. He danced and never made a sound. In the center of his face was a big, dark circle.
I thought the circle was his mouth, frozen open in a mute scream of terror, loneliness and despair, while the Captain made him dance for our amusement. Dance, bear, dance! Dance in your horror and anguish! Dance!
I would stare at our black-and-white television, feeling hollow, feeling as if I couldn’t even blink, unable to look away from the soul-chilling spectacle. The Captain could act so nice – what inner Beelzebub drove him to bring out the pitiful Dancing Bear, episode after episode? Why not just leave the pathetic half-human beast in the dungeon where he obviously lived?
School days ended my viewing of Captain Kangaroo, and over time, the horrible memory faded. It was years later when my mind wandered back and I realized: Hey, moron, that circle on Dancing Bear's face was his nose!
Sorry, Captain. I had you all wrong.
Saturday, July 4, 2009
The world’s lamest ghost story
Some people see loved ones who have passed away, providing consolation or warning. Some see a careworn Abraham Lincoln walking the floors of the White House. Some see orbs or wispy figures that pass through closed doors.
I saw rental trucks.
I was driving home from work late one night, a few days before moving from an apartment to a house. I was restless and decided to take city streets instead of my usual freeway route – just something to do, kill some time, see something different.
I was almost home when I drove by a fenced lot filled with U-Haul trucks. That’s pretty handy, I thought. I was going to need a truck for the move, and here was a place to rent one nearby.
I got up the next morning, looked in the phone book and found a listing for the business at the intersection where I’d seen the trucks. I called to reserve one, and mentioned to the guy on the phone that the location was really convenient.
That’s our old location, he said. The phone number’s the same, he said, but we moved to a new location several months ago.
I got off the phone and drove to the lot. No trucks. The fenced area was overgrown with weeds. There was no sign that any of the weeds had been driven over recently, even at the gate.
I didn’t stay long. There was nothing to see.
I saw rental trucks.
I was driving home from work late one night, a few days before moving from an apartment to a house. I was restless and decided to take city streets instead of my usual freeway route – just something to do, kill some time, see something different.
I was almost home when I drove by a fenced lot filled with U-Haul trucks. That’s pretty handy, I thought. I was going to need a truck for the move, and here was a place to rent one nearby.
I got up the next morning, looked in the phone book and found a listing for the business at the intersection where I’d seen the trucks. I called to reserve one, and mentioned to the guy on the phone that the location was really convenient.
That’s our old location, he said. The phone number’s the same, he said, but we moved to a new location several months ago.
I got off the phone and drove to the lot. No trucks. The fenced area was overgrown with weeds. There was no sign that any of the weeds had been driven over recently, even at the gate.
I didn’t stay long. There was nothing to see.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Another reason I went back to college
There's no way to describe it without sounding like I'm exaggerating.
I'm talking about the most cockroach-infested home I saw when I worked in pest control.
The owner of a rental duplex called and said one of his residents was griping about roaches intruding from the adjacent unit. He seemed exasperated by the complaint and gave the impression that he was hiring us just to shut her up.
A co-worker and I treated her place first. Then we went to the other unit -- The Chamber of Horrors.
The door opened into the kitchen, where the sink, counters, oven and table were heaped with grease-caked pots, pans and dishes. The walls, ceiling, appliances and furniture were yellow-brown with grease. On the floor were paper grocery bags disintegrating from the rotting garbage that filled them. The linoleum floor was so sticky that there was a crackly sound each time one of us lifted a foot to take a step.
There were roaches moving on every surface. Usually you won't see roaches in daylight because they hide in tight spaces until dark. If you see some moving around in the light, that's an indication of a nasty infestation, because it means there isn't room for all of them in their hiding places. And if you see hundreds and hundreds of them moving around the room like reflections from a mirrored ball at a disco ... well.
We decided to treat the other rooms first so they'd already have insecticide in place when we hit the kitchen and drove some of those thousands of roaches into the rest of the unit.
The home appeared to be inhabited by a woman and her teenage son. The son's room was a shrine to drugs and Satan. The notable decor consisted of two rows of various kinds of drug paraphernalia that converged on a painting of the devil.
We made our way back to the kitchen and started spraying insecticide in the usual fashion, hitting the cracks, crevices and corners, using our feet to scoot the decaying bags of garbage away from the walls to reach the edges of the room as well as possible. We puffed insecticide dust under and behind the oven and refrigerator.
With a bad infestation, it was standard to use a fogger that released pyrethrum, an irritating insecticide that spreads through the air and flushes out roaches to speed up the killing process. I got the fogger and my co-worker, who had been on the job a lot longer than I had, said we should put on hard hats, turn up the collars of our coveralls, and tuck our pantlegs into our socks. That can’t be good, I thought. Then we put on our respirators and I turned on the fogger.
The fogger worked, for sure. Roaches came bursting out from every direction like they were fleeing a soccer riot. Dying roaches rained from the ceiling and rolled off our hard hats and shoulders. I danced around like someone was shooting at my feet, trying to keep frantic bugs from crawling up my legs. I wanted to bathe in hot Lysol.
As the roach storm subsided, the landlord stopped by and stepped on a few insects that weren’t quite dead yet, as if killing a dozen of them meant he was doing his duty as a responsible property owner.
And on the wall was a framed photo of the woman who lived there, wearing a pink uniform, with a plate on the frame that said: "Housekeeper of the month."
I'm talking about the most cockroach-infested home I saw when I worked in pest control.
The owner of a rental duplex called and said one of his residents was griping about roaches intruding from the adjacent unit. He seemed exasperated by the complaint and gave the impression that he was hiring us just to shut her up.
A co-worker and I treated her place first. Then we went to the other unit -- The Chamber of Horrors.
The door opened into the kitchen, where the sink, counters, oven and table were heaped with grease-caked pots, pans and dishes. The walls, ceiling, appliances and furniture were yellow-brown with grease. On the floor were paper grocery bags disintegrating from the rotting garbage that filled them. The linoleum floor was so sticky that there was a crackly sound each time one of us lifted a foot to take a step.
There were roaches moving on every surface. Usually you won't see roaches in daylight because they hide in tight spaces until dark. If you see some moving around in the light, that's an indication of a nasty infestation, because it means there isn't room for all of them in their hiding places. And if you see hundreds and hundreds of them moving around the room like reflections from a mirrored ball at a disco ... well.
We decided to treat the other rooms first so they'd already have insecticide in place when we hit the kitchen and drove some of those thousands of roaches into the rest of the unit.
The home appeared to be inhabited by a woman and her teenage son. The son's room was a shrine to drugs and Satan. The notable decor consisted of two rows of various kinds of drug paraphernalia that converged on a painting of the devil.
We made our way back to the kitchen and started spraying insecticide in the usual fashion, hitting the cracks, crevices and corners, using our feet to scoot the decaying bags of garbage away from the walls to reach the edges of the room as well as possible. We puffed insecticide dust under and behind the oven and refrigerator.
With a bad infestation, it was standard to use a fogger that released pyrethrum, an irritating insecticide that spreads through the air and flushes out roaches to speed up the killing process. I got the fogger and my co-worker, who had been on the job a lot longer than I had, said we should put on hard hats, turn up the collars of our coveralls, and tuck our pantlegs into our socks. That can’t be good, I thought. Then we put on our respirators and I turned on the fogger.
The fogger worked, for sure. Roaches came bursting out from every direction like they were fleeing a soccer riot. Dying roaches rained from the ceiling and rolled off our hard hats and shoulders. I danced around like someone was shooting at my feet, trying to keep frantic bugs from crawling up my legs. I wanted to bathe in hot Lysol.
As the roach storm subsided, the landlord stopped by and stepped on a few insects that weren’t quite dead yet, as if killing a dozen of them meant he was doing his duty as a responsible property owner.
And on the wall was a framed photo of the woman who lived there, wearing a pink uniform, with a plate on the frame that said: "Housekeeper of the month."
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