Pinkerton's Weblog

9/11: A JayPinkerton.com Tribute

On this very day, not too long ago, America was devastated by tragedy. The scar is still felt today, and while we can't presume that it will ever heal, we can minister the wound as best we can. I refer, of course, to Canadian-born actor Lorne Greene, who passed on September 11th several years ago, robbing the world of a national treasure.

Greene was perhaps best known as one of the stars of Bonanza. Though I've never seen Bonanza, research conducted at the website Bonanza... The Fan Fiction! gave me a quick education on the show's rich history. A 1950's Western TV series written by five near-illiterate women, Bonanza apparently told the magical adventures of a gentle frontier family who battled poltergeists and mythical dragons when not falling in gay love with each other. For this alone I applaud the groundbreaking show, which if the site is to be believed, had a homosexual wedding every six minutes.

Of all the Bonanza episodes lovingly documented at Bonanza... The Fan Fiction!, I think my favorite was 'The Entity' by Rita Bennett, in which the Bonanza family spends the night in a haunted house and the muscular Hoss beats up a ghost. I present a chilling excerpt here:

"Dadburnit, I have enough of that damn racket! I'm going to take care of this once and for all!" Hoss arose from his chair and stormed upstairs, though Ben pleaded with him, he did not hear one word. Hoss threw the attic door open and walked inside with the door closing behind him. Everyone sat motionless as they heard the fight upstairs. After some time, the door shut and Hoss descended the stairs, not looking too worse for wear, except for some plaster covering his hair, face, and shoulders.

“Hoss, are you all right?” Ben stared at his son who seemed quite unscathed by the whole incident.

“ I’m a little bruised but I have to apologize for the walls. I left some big holes in them when I got thrown about. I’d never smelled anything so bad in my life. Maybe I wore ol’Gerald out a little bit, and maybe he’ll stay quiet for a while. I’m going into the kitchen and find me something to eat…I’m just worked up an appetite.” Everyone kept staring in disbelief at Hoss as he made his way to the kitchen.

With the ghost nursing its wounds in the attic, the Bonanza family gets down to the business of solving the mystery. I won't spoil the ending for you, since I didn't read it, so I'll only offer the tantalizing hint that it probably involves no less than five homosexual weddings.

Spooktaculous note to readers: according to author Rita Bennett, 'The Entity' is rated a strict PG-17 and should only be viewed by those 17 or over. Having read most of the story and found nothing outside of the prose that could be considered terrifying, my explanation for the strict parental advisory is either: a) it had a ghost in it and she's sort of an idiot. b) she used an extremely frightening type face that my computer was too scared to load.

Eventually Bonanza was cancelled for reasons I didn't take the time to explore. But if you felt like pointing fingers at alarmist Christian groups, who maybe shut Bonanza down out of fear of the effect ghostbusting homosexual cowboys were having on impressionable children, I of course won't stop you.

The show's cancellation was difficult for Lorne Greene, I would guess, and he went into a dark tailspin of pills, loose women and murder, probably. Further research would most likely also uncover drug addiction, so out of respect for him I didn't bother conducting any research into his life at all.

Given that the man's life post-Bonanza is such a blank slate, assuming you followed my lead and didn't look into it at all, we can only guess at the events leading up to the man's tragic death September 11th, when he flew a plane into the World Trade Center, beating a terrorist plane to the second tower by five seconds. Originally believed to have been in league with al Queda, the subsequent retrieval of the flight recorder shows that Greene, an amateur pilot, simply lost control of his Boeing 757 jet over NYC airspace, inadvertantly crashing at the worst possible place at the worst possible time.

The day, of course, would be one of tragedy, for Americans and Bonanza... The Fan Fiction! enthusiasts alike. I'd like to take a moment, if I could, to applaud our nation's many brave firemen, and more importantly our nation's countless brave fire escapes, without which escape would have been impossible. They are the real heroes, folks. I leave you with this touching excerpt from the Bonanza... The Fan Fiction! website, as well as a moving picture of our brave fire escapes in action, as well as a moving .gif image of one of our nation's brave ghosts.

The Arabic countries described here are a kind of Aladdin's magic land, fully justified in tales of the mythical, oriental and exotic. You haven't believed the chronicler that the story is true, have you? Or is it true, and just disguised as a tale? What do YOU think?

- From 'An Arabic Tale' by AMG

'My Vagina, The Prison' & Other Poems

This morning I was running late for several business meetings I suspected I should have with corporations about business. This meant I’d have to forgo my preferred method of getting around town – wrestling alligators, and using the momentum of the wrestling to propel me forward – and take that most loathsome of all transportation, public transportation.

I dislike the subway because it’s filled with common people, who get unrealistically upset when I tell them about all the nice cars I have currently in the shop, and how the hubcaps alone are probably worth more than their children’s educations. “Real expensive, huh?” they’ll say, barely cloaking their anger at my expensive dollar-signed hat, long diamond-tipped cane and, held aloft in my gloved hand, a preposterously large diamond-tipped diamond.

“No no,” I’ll say. “The hubcaps are inexpensive. I meant to say that you don’t educate your children.” I add that perhaps the problem rests in them being too filthy to understand me, or their cumbersome foreheads being so grotesquely misshapen as to bend incoming sound waves.

Or possibly, I conjecture, their faces are just stupid. So as not to lose the intellectual upper hand, I’ll say this in Latin. “Tui visio es stupidus, retardo.” Alert readers may note the literal translation of this -- “Your face is stupid, slowly” -- makes no sense, since light refracts off of my retinas with such speed that the faces of common people are stupid almost immediately. However, I prefer including it anyway, on the grounds that it sounds like I have renamed my adversary; and, in the intense Latin heat of our discourse, have christened him ‘Retardo’.

“Yo, fuck you, man,” I am usually told. This is good news for my fists, since they will get to fight. If I don’t feed Lefty and Squanto six common men a day, they waste away to nothing and lose all the registered lethal weapon status my government has cautiously vested in them. At this point I’ll say something else in Latin – gibberish, usually – and then the subway car becomes a flurry of fist-shaped movement, lit by the disco ball effect of my diamond-tipped diamond.

Today’s subway ride, however, would offer pleasures of a non-pugilistic variety. I was standing in the center of the subway car minding my own business, composing poetry in my head and then, deeming this insufficient, loudly with my voice.

“My soul is like an autumn tree bereft of leaves,” I say, rocking the senses of everyone present like a poetry hurricane. “My lake of sadness is like a boat on the ocean. Also, check it: Elysium.”

“Shut up!” I am told helpfully.

“You talk about guns like I ain’t got none,” I say ponderously, lifting my hand aloft in time with the verse for maximum dramatic effect. “What, you think I sold ‘em all?” My voice lilts upwards at 'sold 'em all' to more accurately convey my disbelief with the claim.

“Sit... the fuck... down!” someone yells. Yes! A challenge. I unsheathe Lefty and Squanto from their gloved repositories and put them up in front of me in the form of dukes, as if to say “bring it.”

Bring what, you may ask. The answer, of course, is the noise.

Before I’m able to punch anyone this morning, however, I am tapped on the shoulder by a chubby young man with one of those face-circumferencing beards that fattos use to simulate jaw lines nowadays. I turn around to punch him, but he stops me, not with his fists, but with his tears.

“Your poetry is astounding,” he tells me, his eyes wet and, I have to admit, somewhat bosomy in the soft light of the subway tunnel. “You should come to my poetry reading.”

I explain to him that this would be super-fine. “When is it,” I ask, “and would you mind if I punched you anyway?”

“What? I – arghh!” he replies, as Lefty and Squanto bring the man vast portions of noise.

I arrive several hours later at a nearby Starbucks, where I am ushered to the couches in the back. Sim-Jawline introduces me to a group of people who claim to be poetry enthusiasts, and who look ridiculous. One girl has rings in her nose and ratty black dreadlocks that look like she used tar for shampoo. On another couch, a white-faced scarecrow with glasses and an ironic 80’s t-shirt (Micronauts, I think) tips his latte slightly in my direction.

I sit patiently while Tar-locks starts the proceedings, reciting some nonsense about her vagina being a prison. To pass the time I imagine Tony “Scarface” Montana and Manny discussing a prison break in her vagina-yard, while elsewhere Tim Robbins burrows successfully out of her uterus to freedom using only a rock hammer and patience.

Eventually she tapers off in mid-sentence and bows her head, which even if she wasn’t finished seems like a good time for me to start clapping. Others join in, and together we indicate closure to whatever Tar-locks was mumbling about her vagina. Then it’s my turn. Finally.

I open with a poem about Tim Robbins’ inspiring escape from Tar-locks’ vagina. As I detail the magnetic boots that seal all prisoners to her uterine walls when the alarm sounds for an escape attempt, I’m given a look by Tar-locks that indicates my homage isn’t getting the reception I’d hoped for. Eager to not ruffle feathers, I switch thematic direction — explaining that her vagina is, now that I think of it, less like a prison and more like a G.I. Joe armored personnel carrier, except without as many wheels, and not capable of holding more than five action figures at once. It is at this point that I’m interrupted and told to stop talking about Tar-locks’ vagina altogether.

“But she did!” I interject.

“She’s allowed,” Sim-Jawline explains. “It’s her vagina.”

“Big deal,” I pout, but reluctantly agree to switch topics. My next impromptu poem concerns the guy in the Micronauts t-shirt's vagina, which I am careful to imply is superior to Tar-locks’ in every way. I am in mid-description of his engorged labia when I am once again interrupted.

“No vaginas at all,” it is agreed. I say that I wasn’t aware it was the policy of this poetry reading to make up rules as we go. The observation is received coolly. For a bunch of Leftists, they’re extremely touch-and-go when it comes to personal liberties. Micronauts makes a play for the conch shell, clearing his throat and pulling several damp pages of verse out of his pocket, and so I plough ahead before I lose my spotlight, this time avoiding genitals completely.

My next poem starts off loosely paraphrasing the lyrics to Metallica’s ‘Seek and Destroy’, mostly as a warm-up until my creative juices kick in. “My soul scans the scene in the city tonight,” I say. “Looking for sadness to start up a fight.” Then, right on cue, inspiration hits, and I manage to compose at least twenty minutes of powerful free verse before, predictably, I am again asked to stop.

“Are you making this up as you go?” Micronauts asks accusingly.

“What was all that stuff about the Holocaust not happening?” questions Tar-locks.

“I’ve called the police, dude,” says Sim-Jawline, returning to our group.

A Starbucks, it turns out, is a horrible place in which to wrestle with the police. The layout means you’re constantly bumping into things, and before you know it you’re being charged for destruction of property on top of assaulting an officer. Making lemons out of lemonade, I decide that I should at least win the fight – but the enemy of pugilism, the taser, soon enters the fracas, and darkness encloses me like Tar-locks’ cavernous vagina.

With bail posted I am back on the streets by nightfall, wiser than before and apt to avoid similar trappings in the future. First off: no more hippies. More importantly, though, I have decided to avoid public transit altogether, choosing to henceforth arrive at my various destinations the way God intended: grand theft auto. I have purchased a book on hotwiring, and am confident I’ll be able to master its execution before my next business meeting with whichever business I decide to visit next.

Permission Granted

Me: "Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, I wanted to ask your permission to ask for your daughter's hand in marriage."

Mr. Kelly: [spit-take]

Mrs. Kelly: "Oh."

Me: "Please. Contain your enthusiasm."

Mrs. Kelly: "Well, it's just that we were holding out for someone more... well, you know."

Me: "I completely understand."

Mr. Kelly: "We might as well take it, Martha. She's not getting any younger. This is as good as it's going to get."

Me: "Tell me about it. I wasn't exactly pushing back other suitors on this one, if you catch me."

Mr. Kelly: "You hear that? That's my point. I say we go for it. What do you do, son?"

Me: "Have you ever heard of an investment banker?"

Mrs. Kelly: "Oh my, yes!"

Me: "Yeah, when they park their cars downtown, I'll clean under the mats with a Dustbuster and get their floors pretty clean. $3 a car."

Mr. Kelly: "That's good money."

Me: "Oh yeah. Plus I'll scoop quarters out of the change holder if there's enough they won't miss it."

Mr. Kelly: "That's go-getter thinking. I like your stuff."

Me: "Thanks." [pause] "I like your stuff too."

Diane: "Mom? Dad? I'm home!"

Mrs. Kelly: "In the living room, dear!" [to me] "Looks like this is it. Should we leave?"

Me: "Fuck it, I don't care. Let's just get this over with."

Diane: [entering room] "Jay? What are you...?"

Me: [cold-cocking her onto sofa with an uppercut] "Marry me, bitch!"

Mrs. Kelly: [dabbing eyes] "Oh, I promised I wouldn't do this..."

Mr. Kelly: "If anyone needs me I'm going to go lie down in the yard."

Me: [lifting Diane up into a Gorilla Press] "Marry me or I give you a Tombstone Piledriver! You'll never take away my Intercontinental title, Diane! That's a promise!"

Mrs. Kelly: [sobbing] "Oh, here I go..."

The Problem

The problem, as I see it, is that I’m not confident around women. When I meet someone I’m attracted to, my first instinct is to assume she’s probably not attracted to me. Friends of mine who are good-looking tend to dub this self-defeating behavior as evidence of low self esteem, and try to pick up my spirits with the sorts of irritatingly vacuous maxims you’d normally get as the end-of-show moral on Knight Rider reruns.

“Seize the day, Jay,” they’ll tell me in the slow, meaningful tone we’ve all learned from television is the correct way to state anything of spiritual relevance. This never fails to irritate me, as it assumes the key to my dating problems isn’t that I’m overweight and not terribly handsome, but rather that I’m lazy, like propositions from attractive women bombard me constantly and I pass them up because I’m too busy feeling sorry for myself. Another favorite is “You only live once” — a platitude that has the benefit of looking as deep as the ocean while containing all the moistness of a damp paper towel. Just to clarify for attractive people: me achieving a satisfying relationship isn’t hindered in any way by a mistaken belief that I’m a Highlander. Even if I lived forever, or – as the proverb seems to infer – lived multiple times, it would merely just be more time in which I would be unattractive. All the positive attitude and day-seizing in the world doesn’t change a fairly impressive 27-year track record of almost every woman I’ve met not wanting to have sex with me. When I meet a girl and assume she isn’t hot in the pants for me, this isn’t because I wasn’t aware I only lived once; in Not Good Looking Land, it’s because I have sense recall of the last 50 girls who weren’t hot in the pants for me.

I am told by girl friends who won’t sleep with me that there are plenty of girls out there who aren’t interested in physical beauty and will be willing to love me for my mind. Since I’ve never met any girls like this, I can only assume they a) are ass-ugly and not worth considering, b) get snapped up pretty quickly by ugly guys who can’t believe they’ve met a woman so endearingly insane, or c) are unicorns.

Now, before you accuse me of trolling for pity here, I should mention that I do actually date occasionally. And for anybody actually sympathizing with me right now, allow me to shatter the illusion that I’m not a petty ass by clarifying that I’m just pissed off I’m not thin and pretty enough to nail extremely hot chicks. My looks and weight have filed me into a social category wherein I’m expected to have relationships with girls as equally out of shape and horrifying as myself, and that makes me grumpy. According to my research (spam email), there are hundreds of single dorm girls out there just aching for a hot mouthful of my swollen member.

All of this is no doubt giving you a headache. You’re thinking, “Okay, if you’re so convinced that being thin and good-looking gets you dating prospects, why don’t you quit complaining and lug your fat ass to a gym already? Stop eating cheeseburgers, splurge on some nice clothes, get fuckin’ and stop whining about it.” And I have to admit, it’s a pretty good point. I’ve come to a similar conclusion myself on more than one occasion – usually during a party, after I’ve told funny jokes and listened intently to the ladies, only to watch thin happy single guys walk off with them for a night of enchanted porking. “That doesn’t look so hard,” I’ll think. “I just need to drop a few pounds, buy a goofy-looking shirt and frost my hair like that idiot.”

Introspection sets in. “Why do I automatically assume no women find me attractive?” I reason, and conclude: “Because I don’t think I’m very attractive. I’ve gained weight since university, and every time I look in the mirror I see dough where air used to be.”

Following these epiphanies, I usually draw a conscious line in the sand: I must lose weight so I see myself as attractive, then meet women like gangbusters and have lots of sex. I’ve distilled this line of thought into a simple equation, which looks like this: jogging + salads = pussy.

Veritably thrumming with enthusiasm to alter the course of my life, I’ll go out and buy hundreds of dollars worth of gym memberships, protein powder, Tupperware containers and chicken breasts. I’ll take the plates of hot wing bones off the stationary bike I’d been using as a makeshift holder for hot wing bones, and drag it into the living room. I’ll smoke my last cigarette and throw on a nicotine patch; drink a goodbye beer before turning my back on demon alcohol for good; and as I set my alarm for 4:30 the next morning, look optimistically out the window at the sunset, convinced that tomorrow will be a brand new day. “Who needs drinking?” I’ll think, so proud of myself I would honestly give me a blow job right then and there. “From now on, the only drinking Jay Pinkerton’s doing is from a little something called the CUP OF LIFE.”

I high-five myself and, in preparation for my brand new day tomorrow, go to bed early. Earlyish. Okay, midnight.

Where my Brand New Day Fresh Life Direction Superplan starts to show the wear in its seams is precisely 4:30 the next morning, which I’ve penciled in for forty minutes on the stationary bike (I'm told by people far healthier than I am that this is the best time of the day for pound-shedding exercise). I’ve then penciled in a light breakfast of oatmeal mixed with protein powder, to be washed down with sugarless, creamless, flavorless coffee. I’ve rounded out my pencilings with a note to foist all my high protein Tupperware meals into a gym bag and head off to work, full of vim and vigor and piss and vinegar and whatnot. Ah, fitness. Yes. Smell that fit air. Indulge in the creamy magnificence of living well.

If these little diet kicks of mine have taught me anything, it’s that penciling in forty minutes of cycling for 4:30 AM gives one a strong proactive feeling, like you’re making sense of your life and going places fast. Whereas actually getting up at 4:30 AM for forty minutes of cycling is, let’s face it, so monumentally ill-conceived it’s not even worth bringing up. 4:30 AM invariably has me waking up bleary-eyed and hungover, attempting to focus my eyes on the alarm clock and seeing symbols that represent not numbers but madness. Nobody should ever get up this early, I think, never mind get up this early for something as self-evidently insane as cycling in one spot for forty minutes. I sensibly hit the sleeper alarm, confident my excess pounds can sit tight for one more hour before I exchange them for shredded physique through the unstoppable power of bike-riding.

Lucky for my excess pounds, I instead usually sleep in until 8:00 AM instead. Since I’m running late, I forego the oatmeal and protein breakfast on the grounds that it tastes like shit and tends to be a meal you need a good half-hour prep time to find the courage to put in your mouth. I convince myself to make up for my missed cycling by doing it when I get home.

When I get home, I convince myself to do it the next morning. The next morning, I once again realize how unreasonable I was to ever assume anything would be worth getting up at 4:30 to do. Repeat.

One week later I’ll be carb-depleted, cranky, and have actually gotten on the cycle for a total of maybe twenty minutes. I can’t think. My work is suffering. My writing is non-existent. I’ve turned down several invitations to go out and have fun, since people seem to save those up for the times where you need to eat bird-like portions of non-food out of Tupperware every three hours. A mere seven days after I’ve started my Brand New Day Fresh Life Direction Superplan, it takes only the slightest nudging from a friend before I, in my carb-depleted state, agree unhesitatingly with anything they say.

“What’s the point of getting thin if you’re not happy?” they’ll say, with the inherently unselfish motivation that they want to go out and drink and I’ve said no.

“These are sage points,” I agree, already tasting the beer on my tongue and smelling the crappy deep-fried aroma of the hot wings. The reasons for dieting in the first place – being healthier, happier, finding a satisfying relationship, feeling better about myself – are hazy and difficult to remember. Besides, I’ve been dieting for a whole week, haven’t I? Where’s the hot chicks? Where’s the healthiness? And if I’m so intent on making myself happy, why the hell am I not drinking beer right now? (I’ve distilled this line of thought into a simple equation, which looks like this: jogging + salads = you pussy.)

“Alright, sounds like a plan,” I say, caving in completely.

“There’s a brother,” says my friend. “Remember, you only live once.”

Hackley-Smoot Act: The Bestselling Suspense Thriller

"I have a problem," I said, closing the door to my boss's office behind me.

"Oh?" my boss asked. He stopped typing and looked up from his monitor.

"Yeah," I said, pointing at him like I was Vince Neil and he was a Motley Crue audience. "I'm worried I might be kicking TOO MUCH FUCKING ASS! Anything I can help you with?"

And it's true. For some reason -- possibly the three-day weekend battery recharge -- I was just getting a ton of shit done today. Enough so that I walked into my boss's office to request more work, knowing full well that this was the only circumstance in which I'd be able to use the words "fuck" and "ass" in a sentence while pointing at him and not get fired.

I ended up being such a high-octane work machine today, in fact, that my immense speed became intimidating to others and started to slip me up. Case in point: I was going over some revisions with a woman for a work titled "State-to-State Transportation Liability Insurance: Statute 594, The Hackley-Smoot Act of 1984 and its Repurcussions to Mythical Elves", or something similarly coma-inducing. It's usually an enormous test of mental endurance for me to have to read through one of these phone book-sized things looking for grammatical flaws. But I was kicking, as mentioned, so much goddamn fucking ass today, and taking so many names, that I'd managed to get through the entire thing. I was now on the phone with the author, confirming my revisions and in good spirits about the ass-kickingness I believe I already mentioned.

After we'd agreed to make the changes, she asked me: "So, do you think I should give this another readthrough then, or what?"

The work had already been reviewed by six separate bodies by that point, so it would have been wholly unnecessary. Nonetheless, given that most people I talk to couldn't give a shit where they put their commas and usually associate a call from me with a tax audit, I applauded her commitment to prosiac excellence. "By all means!" I said. "If you're willing, it of course couldn't hurt. It's a bit dry, obviously, but if you're willing to go through it again..."

A pause on the other line. Then:

"I WROTE that, you know," she said in a betrayed tone, which totally floored me. Not that she'd written it -- I'd sort of assumed -- but that she actually seemed defensive that I'd found a piece of work the thickness of a cheese wedge and devoted entirely to liability insurance and the Hackley-Smoot Act less than a wholly engrossing read.

I hadn't been trying to be mean, mind you. I'd honestly just had no idea documents of this nature could even be judged on their inability to keep a reader on the edge of his or her seat with suspense. I'd sort of assumed that, by their very subject matter, books about arcane insurance policy amendments are expected and even encouraged to be as numbingly exhaustive about the subject matter as possible. So I found myself uncertain how to defend myself against her obviously injured tone. It's not like she'd given me a novel to read or anything. If it'd been a period fiction of a Prairie girl unable to contain her passions for a smouldering-eyed farmhand, then I would have cushioned any criticism with a "first off, this is a fantastic read and you should be very proud of yourself."

"Well," I said, trying to backpedal but uncertain how I might believably tell this woman her 500-page dissection of the Hackley-Smoot Act was a Crichton-esque page-turner. "I just meant that... you know... I thought it was... supposed to be."

Silence on the other line.

"Anyway, gotta go."