Hostess Fruit Pie Power + Eulogy to a Stillborn Night

When I was a kid, there was a bookstore a few blocks from home. It was located in one of the many strip malls that dotted Buffalo Grove Road. The store was kind of ramshackle, something you'd expect in some north side Chicago location, not suburbia, but it didn't give off that ethereal charm expected from most used book stores. The store was queened over by this fat lady whose pores oozed prima-donna snobbery. She had brown, greasy hair, which hung over her face like cuts of meat dangling from some ceiling beam, and squinty eyes red from pouring over too many stained-leafed romance novel. I don't remember if she actually walked around her store. I think her bulbous blob simply rooted behind the counter, giving her ample opportunity to glare at anyone who might be browsing through her wares. I tried not to stop in there for fear of her oily glance. When she looked at me, I felt like I had been thrown headfirst into a tub of processed hog lard. But, one afternoon, my sister decided that she wanted to exchange some of her books for other books. That was/is common policy at any used bookstore. Since Fat Lady's used bookstore was the closest in the area, we went in there. There was some hubbub, which was not clarified to me until later, but apparently the book-bitch would only accept exchanges for like-books. So, my sister could not trade her books for fatter books, only children's books. Babysitter's club begets babysitter's club.

That nonsense did not interest me. I wanted comic books and bought a whole stack for about twenty-five cents each comic. Most of these comics were well over thirty years old. I did not realize it at the time, but I had stumbled over some kind of comic gold mine. I regret not keeping them. They would've been worth a fortune, but probably not, since I spent much time reading them and putting my kid-grease all over the pages.

The ads in the comics were quite amusing. There was one ad in particular which I enjoyed; the Hostess junk ads. Hostess ads would feature a comic book hero, usually of the Marvel variety, attempting to fight some adversary but failing until Hostess was consumed. The magical power of the Hostess would enable the hero to achieve whatever. A pop-culture demon such as myself (At least pop-culture from the 80s, 90s), adores such advertising gems. Even now, I occasionally quip that something cannot be done until I have Real Hostess Fruit Pie Power.

Well, today was spent attempting to clean my apartment. Flippy is coming tomorrow and I'd rather her not see the refuse of four men. Unfortunately, cleaning is not my bag and for the most part, I've been rather lackadaisal about what I should be doing. I managed to get some laundry done, and the floor in my room is actually blue, although copper is strewn about. Pennies have a tendency to breed. I need to figure out how to get my quarters and my twenties to breed as well. In spite of aborted money breeding attempts and at least an hour playing video games, cleaning was slowly underway. At each junction in my cleaning thorough-way, I found an excuse to not proceed. Obviously, a source of energy was need. I needed REAL HOSTESS FRUIT PIE POWER.

Real Hostess Fruit Pie Power was available at the local gas station for only $1.09. I went with the premise of acquiring more quarters for laundry (Note to self: maybe quarters are gay) and spent some time staring at the Hostess section. There were three fruit pies available, and I think they've been there for quite some time. Much like wine, the powers of Hostess fruit tends to accumulate as shelf life passes. Were I to eat one, I would most likely be transformed into a being of pure, omnipotent power. I had to think about this carefully. Would I use my powers for good or evil? Would I be able to completely metabolize all 500 calories without growing jumblies? Would I ever find my one true love? The possibilities were mind-boggling and I shifted around the gas station looking for answers, or at least more quarters. After a few minutes of agonizing thought, I realized that someone would have to be man enough to eat old fruit pie, and that someone would have to be me.

Surprisingly, the fruit pie was very good. The crust was all glazed and shit, and the insides were sweet and strangely fluid, much like oil is after it has been gleaned from an engine's vein. I finished it quickly, outside, like all food should be. That was a half hour ago. I'm still waiting for my REAL HOSTESS FRUIT PIE POWERS. I think they'll kick in any moment now. I'd like mind control. That would be a blast.

"George W. Bush. This is Jesus speaking."
"Jesus?! In my head? Great googly-moogly!"
"I want you to balance the budget, reduce the deficit, strengthen the dollar, provide universal health care, and read a damned book every so often."
"Um, Jesus?"
"Yes, my son."
"These are not the droids you're looking for." *runs*


Hmm. Could happen.

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Ever have one of those nights where everything seems to fall apart? Yeah, last night was one of those nights. The night was pregnant with possibilities, but in the end, it birthed a stillborn.

The fraternity was having an exchange. Basically, a bunch of sorority girls come over and get wild and shit. The theme was Pajamas. Girls were expected to wear something revealing. I donned my trusty plaid pants and wife-beater, picked up a forty (King Cobra, I bow to you), and thwaped the house with both feet down. The house was abuzz, beer flowed, and I was unable to drink any. An hour before, I had made a thick deep-dish pizza. Apparently the deep dish was deeply in my stomach and no beer was going to make it down.

I can handle not drinking. Although a bit of drink is nice, it is not necessary, provided there are women and dances. At about eleven, both women and dances were gone and the night seemed dead. Blondie and I tried to salvage what we could by heading to the local dance club. Normally, I love dance clubs and I dance as often as I can, but for some reason tonight, my body did not want to dance. I had to force myself to go through the motions, and when you're forcing yourself to dance, you're not actually dancing as much as you're moving around weirdly. If I have to force myself to dance, something's wrong. And, although I usually don't care about approaching girls from behind and dancing with them, for some reason, I was timid. I think it's that I didn't really want to dance with anyone and my mind knew that, so it denied me a potential partner.

I skulked out of 110 a few minutes before closing and headed home. Once home, Kapo told me about a party at one of the local frat houses. I really didn't want to turn in for the night, but felt that something had to happen otherwise this particular Thursday would've been one of the most horrid of the year.

I probably should have stayed in. The AGR house was much too crowded for a sober Jon. Every time people bumped into me, and plenty did, I felt the need to eviscerate them. After an hour of pushing people away, jail time seemed worth the utter glee I would have experienced after ripping some poor guy's entrails out with my teeth. It's a good thing that Kapo and I high-tailed it out of that place after a bit. We ended up at some girl's apartment, listening to a guy with a serious Napoleon complex bitch about some asshole and some fucknut.

Yeah. A stillborn night. Everyone's gotta have them. Balances out all the good weekends.


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Wonderjons unite! Form of...

Now With Linking Goodness

Gotta shout out ta mah mom. She has figured out this blogging nonsense and is now attempting to figure out new ways to worry about me. It's a good thing I decided long ago to never put in the full details of my day to day existence, for fear that I would eventually get long-winded emails explaining that the latest decision or fiasco is sure to leave me morally and financially derelict. Yes, it's true. The blog is actually Jon-lite. Anyone who knows me, though, knows I'm usually close-lipped about most of the deep happenstances or lousy circumstances. It's an evolved survival mechanism, probably not a good one, but one nevertheless.

As expected, I received an email from Mom asking about some incidents described in my blog. I clarified it and have decided that I will again start linking my more obscure allusions and metaphors. It takes more time to write, but it'll be easier for y'all to understand what I'm talking about, or as my mother aptly put it, my philosophical diarrhea. I think philosophical diarrhea is a nice way of saying I'm fulla-shit. But, I digress.

Fo' sheezy, anyway.

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There is only one real constant in my rather haphazard life. Jon, at all times, must have at least one part of his body that is not functioning properly. For a long time, this constant was met by the decapitation of my fingerprint, and most recently, the un-kosher bruise on my hip. The finger hasn't been bothering me much, and the bruise healed up a few days ago. Once the bruise stopped hurting, I began expecting the next pain. I mean, if I didn't hurt at all, bad things would happen, like the moon falling out of its orbit and crashing into Mars or something.

Most of y'all know that I'm a rather dedicated exercise-nut. I try to lift weights every day, and most nights, you can find me thrashing my punching bag, in search of a toned body or an Adonis complex. Whichever comes first. Well, about a week ago, I noticed that the shirtsleeves of one of my t-shirts were becoming too tight for my arms. This led to much glee, and even more stitch removal. Yep. I had to cut slits in a shirt's arm tubing in order to fit my arms through. The slit cutting led to much rejoicing. I bounded through the house, striking He-man poses and blurting erudite saying such as "By the power of Greyskull, Skeletor, I will make you my bitch!" It's kind of ironic, though, because I never knew what the hell He-Man was gobbling about until recently. The cartoons I watched when I was growing up were not captioned. And, I'm beginning to suspect that He-Man would not have attempted to swing from one arm on a pull-up bar without properly warming up. My muscles were already a bit tight from exercising earlier that morning and did not feel like dealing with the shit I was heaping. I swung once, and my arm felt much like a rubber band does after being pulled too hard. So, yeah, I pulled my right bicep.

It's feeling a bit better now, which is good, because I need to lift weights. It wouldn't do for me to cut slits in my sleeves, and then lose bicep mass. I am, unfortunately, feeling a bit sick. I guess a constant needs to be constant in order to be a constant.


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Happy fun sunshine days are best when good things happen. I was just out of a local pizza parlor, which serves the best deep-dish outside Chicago (it's all in the quality of grease, ya dig?) when a cute little blonde girl bopped past. We locked eyes and I winked. She smiled, turned crimson, and squeaked a greeting. I think her step faltered a bit. Now, were I up in my game, and I wasn't, I would've stopped to talk to her and maybe get a number. But, I was satisfied with my pizza and didn't feel like plying my man-whore trade. It's too bad, I think, because she walked past and I watched that very cute ass sally forth. What she and I shared wasn't quite a holy moment, but it was a very shared intimate moment. Random moments of sexual chemistry are touching and make a day worth living. I think everyone oughta have sex-charged moments with perfect strangers, at least once or twice a week. It's good for the soul.

I think these sexualized moments won't be common for a bit. I had a haircut (they were all cut!) today and the woman butchered my hair for lack of semantic coherence. I need emergency hair care, STAT!

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I saw my first motorcycle of the season today. It made me happy and gave me funny tingling sensations. The bike wasn’t much to look at. It was an early 80’s Yamaha UJM (Universal Japanese Machine), the kind of bike that can pretty much emerge from the smoldering ruins of a nuclear holocaust relatively intact, but still leaking copious amounts of oil. The future will be built with engines and parts supplied from the rotting corpses of UJMs that have perished for lack of oil and properly functioning shaft drives. John Titor rides a Honda Four.

The bike was even maroon, which is standard operating paint for any bike emerging from the early eighties. It’s about time I see motorcycles on the road. The local bookstores have already sectioned off a portion of their magazine racks for my sole perusal and have kindly asked me to keep the pages drool and jism free. Although watching motorcycles run cannot substitute for actual riding, it’s all I have to subside my fix. Eventually, I’m going to enter convulsions and some doctor is going to drag me to a local bike and gun the engine.

B..b..b...but Doc! You’re an enabler!
Dammit, Janet! Some things man was not meant to intervene! This is one of those times. This man needs motorcycles!

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I have become accustomed to the sight of my roommate perched on the couch with his hands in his boxers. I'm not sure that my acceptance of this uncomfortable situation as a facet of normalcy in SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up; Military slang and the name of our apartment. Yes, it's a double pun.) is a psychologically healthy one, and at any time I expect a mental breakdown, coupled with a Woody Allen like monologue about analysts and masturbation.

In the mean time, Blondie has bequeathed me his keys and I go to Krogers in search of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes.

Numb

From Cnn:
Journalist-author Hunter S. Thompson has died of what investigators suspect was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Details soon.


I am completely and utterly numb. HST was one of my heros.