"Development Hell": The Ultimate Horror/Comedy

Full disclosure, this isn't a real movie. But damn it, it should be!

I once met actor Doug Bradley (of Pinhead fame) and I'll always remember his suggestion that horror and comedy were two sides of the same coin. Both rely on timing and surprise, and both are judged in quality by what kind of feelings they provoke in the audience. But as similar as they are, they're not the same. And it takes a master of both to have any hope of ever blending them into that rare success story called the horror/comedy.

Do something for me, Google "best horror comedies" right now. Go on. Look at the list that comes up. Out of those titles, how many of them legitimately qualify as both horror films and comedies? "Young Frankenstein" was a comedy. Period. "Ghostbusters" was a comedy. It had some jump scares, but it was definitively a comedy. "Fright Night" was a horror movie; humorous elements, yes, but it wasn't a comedy. "The Lost Boys", horror. "Beetlejuice", comedy. "Scary Movie 2", neither. And "Gremlins" was just kind of that thing that sort of happened in the eighties.

See, I'm a proud comedy snob. I find bad comedy tedious (i.e. most of Jim Carrey, and all Happy Madison productions). I have a bit more tolerance for bad horror movies, probably because they still have the chance of transforming into unintentional comedies. But for me to consider something a good horror/comedy, it really has to do something special; "Happy Death Day" is my go to example.

So what's all of this a preview to? Well, I got to thinking about the horror films that most people agree are masterpieces, and what makes them so. Funny thing, even though Universal churned out a whole bunch of black and white monster pictures back in the 30's, the movies that people really cite as being the apex of horror tend to come from the 70's. But the comedy giants all seem to come from the black and white period of film. Maybe horror really needed to be born on film (the Dracula/Wolfman period) and given a chance to grow up, while comedy got to reap the benefit of having matured throughout the vaudeville circuit.

It's probably a conversation best saved for another time. The point is, I had this bizarre thought exercise to take classic film comedians and mix them into some of the popular post-classic horror films and see what kind of explosion might occur. Here's the result: an anthology-styled horror movie (similar to "Creepshow", or "Tales From the Crypt") made up of six one-reel segments, about twenty-two minutes each. Obviously we're still a few years away from reanimating dead performers so stand-in talent will have to fill some huge shoes, but that's a studio thing. I'm just here to describe the movie to you until someone steals the idea.

1. Gone to the Dogs (based on "An American Werewolf in London", starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello)

We'll kick off the proceedings with something familiar. Abbott and Costello are no stranger to horror, having tangled with Bela Lugosi and Lon Chaney Jr. Usually regarding a comedy duo the straight man drives the plot and the comic delivers the flavor. I haven't had a vast experience with Abbott and Costello, but from what I've seen it's always been Costello as the engine while Abbott usually stands on the side and lobs in the variables to trip him up. So with that in mind we need a story that places them on unequal footing.

The duo are traveling through England and stop in a pub, just like the original. It doesn't take too much confusion with English idioms for Costello to get them both thrown out. They're attack by a werewolf; and being a horror/comedy, Abbott is killed. Costello in infected and taken to a nearby hospital (you know the drill).

From there it's a sequence of the hyperactive Costello having to come to terms with the fact that he's a legitimate threat to innocent bystanders. But being Lou Costello, invariably he would take on more domestic dog-like traits than ravenous wolf. He's not a killer, but he's capable of infecting people. The rest of his story follows his attempts to get himself locked away, all while dealing with Abbott's apparition trying to guide him. Characteristic wordplay routines ensue, and in the end Costello is taken to the pound, presumably after turning all of London into a pack.

2. Wacko (based on "Psycho", starring Charlie Chaplin)

We now turn our attention to Alfred Hitchcock, who knew how to decorate his thrillers with some hilarious material but couldn't seem to get a straight up comedy off the ground. Here we use Charlie Chaplin's little tramp character to retell "Psycho" the way Gus Van Sant should have -interestingly.

Chaplin was a master of pathos, and Norman Bates was oddly sympathetic. It might be odd seeing him as the story's killer but we're doing dark comedy. In this version, it's revealed from the get-go that his mother is a corpse (oh, sorry, spoiler alert) and we get to see Norman's daily routine of having to run a hotel while remaining oblivious to the fact that she's dead.

The plot beats are pretty much the same as the original except that his 'mother' persona is more directly involved, meaning Chaplin has to keep doing quick changes to maintain both guises. We have to believe that HE believes he's actually two different people. After Marion Crane is killed and people come looking for her, he has to up the ante by also playing her as if she's still alive. This leads to a complicated slapstick chase through the hotel where he's finally apprehended and taken to the station. But unlike the original, Chaplin's Norman escapes custody because he also thinks he's the psychiatrist at the end and delivers the closing monologue so convincingly that Marion's family don't realize they're still talking to Norman.

3. Diet and Exorcists (based on "The Exorcist", starring Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy)

Stan Laurel honestly never needed a partner, you can do a Youtube search for 1925's "Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde" for evidence (one of cinema's earliest examples of parody). But for whatever reason, he attached himself to Oliver Hardy and who am I to argue?

We jump right in; a little girl demonstrates possession by a demon, and our duo are the priests assigned to exorcise her. As with everything they've ever tried to do, they're ineffective. Each attempt winds up hurting Ollie and damaging property. As the girl becomes more antagonistic a classic L&H tit for tat battle escalates, sending Hardy tumbling down the fire escape stairs.

It's turns out the girl has been lying; there was no demon, she just didn't want to get dragged to school or church or whatever kids got dragged to in the 20's. But she convinces Laurel that the demon has left her and gone into him. He goes to tell Hardy, who characteristically overreacts, and all hell breaks loose on the city streets involving every pedestrian and delivery truck in sight. I'm not sure exactly how it ends, but the legendary "fine mess" Laurel has "gotten them into" will probably be worse than purgatory, probably dead and locked outside Heaven's doors until they figure out how to get rid of the demon that isn't actually there. Well, that's certainly darker than I usually go.

4. Yawn of the Dead (based on "Dawn of the Dead", starring the Three Stooges)

We need a palette cleanse after that one, so we turn to the Stooges. As impulsive and chaotic as they are, I find the trio very hard to root for unless they're actually fighting for something noble. For that we turn to George A. Romero's blueprint of zombie survival in a mall while having to protect a pregnant woman.

This segment is not all that plot heavy. It's the Stooges turned loose in a shopping mall having to fight off a zombie hoard using whatever is available; I should think the bits essentially write themselves. I think the real question is whether or not they live. Invariably they'll succeed in saving the pregnant woman's life, but it doesn't seem particularly Stooge-like if it's a happy ending all around.

Probably it makes the most sense for Curly to get bitten by a zombie but the transformation doesn't have any effect on his personality. Larry would get himself infected by finishing off a half eaten hotdog that he procured from Curly, and Moe would accidentally get bitten by one or both of the other two in the middle of a Stooge brawl (and then blame them for it).They're about to transform fully and start eating each other when it's revealed to be just a nightmare that Curly's having. It turns out everything is fine when out of the blue Shemp walks in. Moe asks him where he's been, and he takes the trio outside to see a UFO floating above them.

5. A Night at the Slaughterhouse (based on "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre", starring the Marx Brothers)

You know, I'm tempted to just leave out the description entirely because I can't think of anything else that would effectively shuffle horror and comedy together better than those fifteen words. The Marx Brothers were subversive; particularly Groucho, whose characters were always active members of the very establishments he was destroying. Unlike most comedic troupes who inflicted anarchy through incompetence, the Marxes knew what they were doing. Theirs was the comedy of equalizing, dragging the upper crust down to the pig pens where the peasantry dwelt.

Overlaying the Marxes on top of Massacre's Sawyer family (here referred to as the Hungadungas) isn't all that much of a stretch. Harpo is obviously Leatherface, mute and unstoppable. Groucho fills the role of the service station proprietor/active patriarch. Chico is the enigmatic hitchhiker. And grandpa, who's barely in the film, would be the long overdue appearance of the Gummo on film.

But as turbulent as dinner with the Marx Brothers would no doubt be, we still need a minimal excuse to stay on their side. For that let's revise the victim count. They aren't just average teens who breakdown in the middle of nowhere, but Kardashian-like reality stars who get stuck between private airports. We, as the audience, tolerate bad behavior from the Marxes; partially because their targets deserve it to a degree, but mainly because they're entertaining enough to make us abandon our ethics. At the end of the segment, the lone survivor escapes on a passing truck with a driver who looks suspiciously like Zeppo. She tries to summarize the events she's endured, listing off the family members, to which Zeppo repeats the famous line "You've left out a Hungadunga. You've left out the main one, too." He gives a knowing wink to the camera and the story ends.

6. I Am Legend Jr. (based on "I Am Legend", starring Buster Keaton)

Closing out our anthology is a genuine silent black and white segment, homaging everything from "Nosferatu" to "Halloween". Keaton is in the Robert Neville role, the last human alive in a world of vampires. Just like in the Richard Matheson novel, Keaton is both the victim in his perspective and the predator from the perspective of the vampire community. He resides in a mansion with all the science stuff, while the vampires 'live' in a castle at the other end of town.

We skip straight to the arc where he meets the partially infected woman and tries to figure out how to cure her. What follows is a back and forth infiltration/kidnapping where he keeps trying to bring her back to the mansion while the other vampires retrieve her and chase him off. Eventually the vampires get the upper hand and try to execute Keaton. Simultaneously the woman (who's been left alone in Keaton's mansion) has the chance to look through his notes. She realizes his intentions were never harmful and goes to rescue him.

A chase scene with multiple sight gags across town later, and the woman is finally able to defuse the situation with the vampires. They collectively forgive Keaton and all decide to move into the mansion with him. It takes mere seconds for him to realize that suddenly being thrust into a huge populous is going to make him miserable. So he dons his hat and heads to the now empty castle to live alone. A bittersweet happy ending, but undoubtedly the best note to go out on.

The Halloween Monster Auditions

Wow. There's nothing like 101 degree weather two days into October to make you wonder if Halloween has been cancelled. Traditionally this is my favorite time of year, but I have to admit I'm not feeling it right now. There's hope, this third consecutive month of August is in its infancy, so we'll see how I'm doing closer to Grinch Night. For now I'm just kind of zombie-ing my way through my own lineup of monsters.

What monsters are those, you didn't ask? Well, multiple credit cards for one. That's a monster. I think I'll personify it as the horror of the Taxman, the predator who won't kill you but keeps leaving you worse off than you were before. Then there's ongoing car issues, my favorite. Let's make that the disobeying Android that has its own agenda now and you gradually realize you're fully dependent on it but no longer among its priorities. And lastly, but certainly not lastly to the party, my mental health has sprung a new leak. I've been taking poor care of myself, as most of my energy has gone towards pretending that I'm not taking poor care of myself, and as such I didn't realize I was having a breakdown until I curiously looked up the signs of a breakdown and checked off six of the seven symptoms (Seroquel, you're a good friend but you need to be cheaper).

I don't have a decent mimesis for chronic depression in monster form; I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to bat it around over the next recovery period. I will say I started a new therapist yesterday, and I feel good about the direction I'm going. I mentioned that I had a blog and she asked if I write about what I'm going through mentally. No I don't. I write about anything BUT that. I don't know if you've been reading the past 255 posts, but I've only occasionally slipped in actual personal information. Genuinity has never been my jam. But as I'm finding myself at the front door of Halloween season without a costume, I thought I might try being myself for a couple of paragraphs. Just to see.

Well, that was fun, wasn't it? Thanks to whoever you are out there; including my one recent visitor from the Philippines, I hope you enjoyed whatever the thing was you stumbled across.

But I'm not here to focus on me, I'm here to welcome Halloween. And this year I'm going to do that by bringing in some of the common, but less revered figures of spookiness and try to figure out how they got cast in the holiday's ensemble among more obvious presences like vampires and witches. Besides, my Taxman and Android need some company until depression finds its costume. So here we go, the B-Team of ghoulies and what it is that's scary about them.

1. The Scarecrow

I'm not talking about the Batman character, just a standard pumpkin-headed strawman that invariably causes birds to wonder just how effing stupid the human race thinks they really are. The Scarecrow has 'scare' in its name, so you wouldn't think there'd be a whole lot to deconstruct, but let's explore it a little bit.

No matter what kind of face you give it, the Scarecrow isn't inherently frightening. Barring supernatural influence, it just hangs there. In fact, it's whole utility is about trying to convince small animals that it's something it isn't. In fact, there's something oddly comforting about the sight of a Scarecrow. Maybe it's the hat? Or maybe it's the marker of civilization among acres upon acres of the same cornstalks.

Imagine you're lost in an unfamiliar countryside, pushing your way through wheat, thinking "Dear God, don't let me run into something with claws!". You step into a clearing and stand face to face with old vegetable head himself. Your first thought is not to run away, but to feel momentarily secure in your new options. It means there's a structure nearby. It could be a family of cannibals, but at least you've made progress towards something. The Scarecrow has a strangely opposite effect of its original purpose; it bestows hope.

So what makes a Scarecrow scary then? Certainly not because it does anything, but because it doesn't have to do anything. Whatever happens in that field (chainsaw maniac, aliens, or Kevin Costner's dad) the Scarecrow is just a spectator. It's not in any danger. But you might be. Nobody is out to get the Scarecrow, and even if a loose machete swing decapitates it, that head is replaceable. Yours isn't.

The real potential for fear with a Scarecrow is that you've suddenly stepped into a spotlight that you don't necessarily want to be in. And the Scarecrow isn't going to help you. It's just going to watch, and wait. With that said, I think at some point I'm going to storyboard a horror music video, and I'm going to have one moment where the lead realizes that they're a character in a movie, by accidentally seeing the audience. A whole theater full of Scarecrows. [copyright me]

2. The Clown

Again, let me stress I'm not referring to a specific clown with a fully crafted backstory. As unintentional horror master Jim Henson once demonstrated, furniture can be traumatizing in the right context. But out of these characters the Clown is the only one to regularly show up on the lists of common phobias.

If the multiple bus stops throughout the uncanny valley aren't enough of a giveaway, let's take a moment to explore why someone becomes a Clown. Presumably to make people laugh, or (on a more basic level) to connect. No harm there, and I'd expect most hopeful Clowns go into this field of performance with a heart of gold; and only slightly fewer leave it with their hearts untarnished. But I'd argue the best nightmares start with purity, which makes the Clown a prime candidate for corruption.

I recently had an online debate about Todd Phillips, who has given us a Joker movie that I never wanted. My takeaway, in the interest of brevity, is that Phillips left comedy because he feels the world has gotten too PC. This is untrue. The world has been PC since at least the early nineties and has not changed. In my opinion, Phillips is a limited comedian who can't handle honest feedback about his limitations and he'd rather blame the audience.

I bring this up because it illustrates a fundamental truth about comedy. It's a wild animal. If you approach it correctly it will let you pet it, feed it, even ride it, but it doesn't tolerate your bullshit. The moment you forget to respect it, comedy will bite your head off. You may not feel you deserve it, but too damn bad, you knew it had teeth when you stepped into its den.

When the Clown is scary, it's because of that sense of desperation. This Clown knows the motions, be loud and intrusive, but doesn't have the intuition to actually be funny. Most Clowns of this type are not the actual threat themselves, but catalysts for invoking comedy's wrath. And you're right in the blast radius because Beepo just won't get the f**k away from you. That's the horror of the Clown; an awareness of their own demise and a determination to take someone down with them. You.

3. The Captain

And by extension pirates, but that archetype more often leads to dark adventure than real horror, regardless of skeleton count. The Captain is a bit of an oddity among these characters, in that his fright factor isn't immediately obvious. I mean, dude just drives the boat right? So why does he show up so much in ghost stories and Scooby-Doo mysteries?

Ultimately the Captain is a symbol of control. Whether you're on safari or traveling through space, the Captain is the one calling the shots. At his most benevolent, he recognizes his responsibility in keeping you safe from the unknown elements surrounding you. But with great power comes great corruption, and the Captain of horror doesn't give a leaky lifeboat about you and the other peons' well-being.

It's hard to make him scary without any sort of context, otherwise he just comes off as a grump. A Captain willing to sacrifice his crew for a greater (self) reward opens the ship's hatch to some of the aforementioned elements of the deep. Likewise, there's a psychological horror of a Captain who orders an obedient crew to do something clearly immoral. There are lots of possibilities here, but as we're doing deconstructions what's left over when there's no scenario?

The ship. The creaky, echoey ship. Those never thick enough walls separating oxygen from frigid salt water and tentacles. It's not the place you want to be, but it IS where the Captain wants to be. Why? Because it's his world. He's the boss. He's attuned to every bolt and railing on this imposing vessel. In fact, he might be so in sync with the rhythmic bobbing of metal that he's stopped being purely human and become a sort of avatar for the ship itself. The line between his personality and the ship's becomes nonexistent.

There's a reason the Captain goes down with the ship, it's where he belongs. Land is for lubbers; the helm, come hell or high water, is his place. When you look into the eyes of the ghost Captain, you're looking into the heart of the whole ship. And if you meet him on land he's there for a purpose, and it's probably not one that's going to work out in your favor.

4. The Knight

Suits of armor are a permanent staple of any gothic architecture, and with good reason. They're shaped like a human, but there's no indication as to who or what is inside. And unlike the Scarecrow, these things were designed to move. But they don't, because nobody's in them. Right?

If you're doing a haunted castle story, the easiest way to convey that all hell is about to break loose is by having one of these bastards turn his helmet. As a predator, the Knight is a perfect blend of concreteness and abstraction. You know what the shell looks like, but there's no telling what knave, phantom, or magician is controlling it. And unlike Michael Myers's repeated stretch of credibility, there's no doubt this zombie is going to survive a ballista to the chest.

Have you ever heard of the trope 'What you are in the dark'? In fiction it refers to a moment where a character reveals exactly who they are to an audience they're unaware of because in-universe they're completely alone. It's a chance to break a promise for personal gain with no evident consequences. It's kind of like the Groundhog Day thought experiment; who are you when there's no tomorrow?

The Knight is a kind of variation on this idea. He's anonymous. He may not even have an identity behind the visor, and if he doesn't have to look himself in the eyes, what does that make him capable of? Moreover, what is it we imagine he's capable of. Smarter people than me have pointed out, in all of our folklore we're truly afraid of ourselves. Our Draculas and Jasons are frightening, not because they're so far removed from who we are but because they're too close to who we think we might be.

It's possible that it's just Mr. Wickles in the suit of armor being a dick again, but our nightmares demand that we don't give ourselves that as an easy out. We know, with every intuition that something intangible is under the bed, that the Knight is hollow. And if we dare seize the opportunity to peer inside his metallic figure we'll be left with the ultimate horror that there's nothing inside. And the sight of it may very well displace our souls so there's nothing inside of us either. And that's worse than whatever he was going to do when he got his gauntlets on us.

5. The Bride

I saved her for last because I find her the most fascinating. I'm sure Brides sprung up in horror long before Edgar Allen Poe started killing his female characters, but this is the guise in which she's most observed. It's the day of her wedding, obviously because she's wearing the dress and veil and holding the flowers. But a sadness has struck on this day that has been reserved to be her happiest. She's dead, or the groom's dead, or the cat ate the cake, the details typically don't matter. The point is her wedding day has become tragic.

One of the most famous Brides resided in the attic in Disney's Haunted Mansion ride. Her multiple choice histories are actually quite fascinating. At one point the story of the Haunted Mansion centered around her (and still does in Paris). That didn't exactly come together, but her placement on the ride is at the center point where the ghosts transition from eerie to fun. Currently she's a black widow Bride named Constance Hatchaway, and despite the visual effects she's a lot less interesting now.

So back it up to the previous Bride who's just...there. The Wedding March plays in a minor key and the Bride waits. That's all she does. What the hell happened? We don't know, but the feeling of loss stays with you long after you're back in the relentless sunlight.

Weddings are a lot of things, and all of them carry an emotional charge. Change, hope, joy, loss, endings, beginnings; it's an overload. And right in the middle of it all is the Bride. It's her day, for better or worse. And when some event happens which causes the day to unfold in a direction opposite where it was expected to go, it may very well transform the Bride permanently. Her day is ruined, which means she is ruined. What happens to her then? Does she keep waiting for the resolution that she was expecting? Maybe. And that's a story with a sad ending. Or does she fight back?

I recently watched the movie Ready or Not, which told the story of a Bride who married into an extremely wealthy family, only to find herself on the short end of a sacrificial ritual. I wanted to love this movie, because it had all of the elements in exactly the right places; and to be fair it did so many wonderful things with those elements. But it dropped the ball on the only one that truly mattered. Going into the third act the Bride deserves to become the monster.

It's rare I can say I find myself rooting for the monster; Maleficent comes to mind, and Jigsaw on an inconsistent basis. This kind of Bride is such a monster who has earned her blurred line between villain and anti-heroine. The world of horror tends to be amoral. But when those amoral forces screw with the wrong woman on the wrong day, the retaliation is strangely comforting. Almost like a roundabout way of suggesting that justice can still be special ordered.

An Open Letter: Where is the Evidence of God?

Hi!

We haven't met yet, and may never, but a very interesting question seems to have brought us together for this brief time. As a Christian, I ask myself that quite a lot. I don't really bother with asking other Christians, because the answer always circles back to things like the Bible, the eyes of a baby (probably the least compelling argument), or the ever popular "There is no evidence, that's why it's faith".

That last one is true, but it's not why I'm here, and I think it's probably not why you're here either. Maybe there's something we can uncover if we temporarily withhold that conclusion.

How about this for an answer? Evidence of God is everywhere................maybe.

Yeah, I wasn't all that convinced either. Why don't we try it from a different angle? Evidence is more the language of the scientific method, so let's do some observation.

What do we know beyond any reasonable doubt? We exist. The existentialists may want to debate that one but we have to draw the line somewhere, so let's take our own experiences at face value. We exist. The world exists. And our understanding of the way the world is now fits nicely in the theory of evolution.

Cool. Is God anywhere in that? Well, right out of the gate we're open to interpretation. Assuming God exists, then the fact that the world exists would then be evidence of God's existence. But then again, God is a pretty massive concept which makes that a pretty massive assumption. And therein lies the problem. Viewing God through scientific eyes is impossible because our existence is essentially God's petri dish; the bacteria cannot observe the technician at the microscope.

I guess you could say God is a hypothesis that unfortunately can't be tested. But maybe at this point, the best question to ask is, why did this hypothesis come into being at all? If you already believe the Bible, then your answer is there, but for the sake of discussion let's remove that variable and see what's left.

Let's say you and I and some other people are sitting around a campfire in our tribal garb, and the conversation turns to the topic of death. Things die. We've seen it. It's a foregone conclusion that some day each one of us will die as well. Bummer huh? Kind of ruins the evening. A few of the younglings cry a bit. But then our tribemate Crazy Og pantomimes out "What if some part of us continues to exist in a different form after our bodies cease to be?"

Well that's a ridiculous and oddly profound question from Og, isn't it? Where would an idea like that even come from? And that, frankly, is a bizarre quirk of our existence as humans that has always baffled me. If no part of us continued to exist beyond death, why would any subspecies of ape ever have gotten it into their heads to even ask question like this? From an evolutionary standpoint, it seems to serve no real purpose.

Who knows? It's possible that all of our intellect and abstract thought is the product of a random aberration that simply is. That's a hypothesis. An alternate hypothesis is that there's something beyond our perception that we might have gotten one very brief glimpse into and it changed the course of our evolution.

For me, that's as close to an answer as I'm going to get in my life on earth. The fact that we're so passionately prone towards questions that we can't answer at least indicates to me that answers are out there; even if they continue to be unattainable. I call those answers God, because it's a convenient language I was taught; and with God as my witness, there are times I REALLY need to discuss my thoughts on the matter.

Isn't that funny? I have this need. I wonder if my dog ever ponders the mysteries of the universe.

But getting back to the original question, where is the evidence of God? And maybe what we're really asking is, are the things that we can observe evidence of anything? And if so, are we simply using 'God' as the placeholder term for whatever these things are evidence of?

I think the scientific approach pretty much has to stop here, allowing philosophy to take over. And with that, I guess I really can't end on anything other than what I personally believe. I believe that some part of us continues when we die. Some form of energy (which isn't exactly incompatible with the scientific notion of energy being neither created nor destroyed).

I believe in God. "The God of the Bible?" I pretend you ask. Yes, specifically the loving God described in the gospels. "How come?" Because God makes sense to me. The lessons in those books contain a really solid moral philosophy about compassion and tolerance and things that aren't always easy but require us to live for something beyond our natural state of self-preservation. Morality has to come from somewhere, and experience doesn't exactly lead to nature being the source. By Occam's Razor, a higher power is the simplest solution.

"Could you be wrong?" Uh...yeah. I think the universe contains endless possibilities. The odds of any of us hitting the ultimate truth on the nose is one point away from impossible.

"Then what's the point?" Fair question, and again one without a solid answer. I don't know. The best I can give you is a paraphrase of something Eleanor Powell once said. Who we are when we're born is God's gift to us. Who we are when we die is our gift to God.

Now if you don't already believe in a higher power, that might not resonate with you, but clearly part of the human experience is navigated by the questions we ask ourselves. These unanswerables change us, and give each of us a unique identity. The 'spiritual struggles' are important because they truly feel important. To us. Why not to God?

One last thing. I mentioned I'm a Christian. You may not be. My God is unconcerned with those specifics. I believe that all souls belong to whatever that higher power, whatever it prefers to be called. No matter what anyone believes in or doesn't believe in, we're all pointed in the same direction. None of us have the monopoly on truth, we're all just searching. So you, whoever you are, keep doing exactly what you're doing. You're on the right path for you.

The Wax Buzzard Files: Chapter Six -The Final Chapter at Least Until the Next One

You have found Chapter Six of The Wax Buzzard Files. You should feel very good about yourself because not everyone has. No, seriously. Turn to the nearest stranger and ask them if they've found Chapter Six of The Wax Buzzard Files. When they say no (and they will), point and them and laugh and say "I found something that you didn't" in a really bratty voice, and then run like mad because that's a really good way to make mortal enemies. Sorry in advance about that.


When I woke up I found myself in a dark room; I could just tell it was me, I'm always close by. Especially because I was tied to a chair; no way I would have gotten out of earshot. Hey me.

The whole world was spinning. That was consistent with astrophysics. By extension the room was spinning, and probably still is if it hasn't been torn down. But there was something else. No, not there. Hang on. There! Right there was something else. My chair, spinning, inside the room, on the world, with the lead pipe. Man, that really was something else. I was on one of those junior death traps of nausea- what do you call them? Merry-go-rounds. I call them junior death traps of nausea, but yours is shorter so let's go with that.

The lights came on, and went back off. And on. And off. And on. The pawn shop clerk was playing with the switch; that's so annoying. "All right! I'll talk," I said, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. The clerk left the switch in the half on/half off position (that old gimmick never works) and stood at the edge of the merry-go-round. "Detective Guffey," he said as we briefly made eye-contact.

My continued rotation gave me a chance to inspect my surroundings. Air duct, too small. Window, too high. Cellar, too creepy. Porridge, too cold. Cabinet, empty. Painting, crooked. Plants, dead. Mirror, cracked. Safe, locked. Crowbar, missing. T.V., broken. Drapes, ugly. Elephant, I made that last one up, but there was nothing else to talk about. I completed the circle and faced my captor again. "Yes?"

It took another half dozen rounds before the conversation could continue. First the guy got a phone call, next he apologized for it, I told him it was no big deal, then he forgot what he was saying, I had to remind him; by that point I was getting motion sick.

"Why don't you hop this children's merry-go-round so we can talk like adults." I said, very quickly. He did as I suggested, not because I suggested it but because he couldn't understand what I'd suggested and wanted to find out; my suggestion had only worked ironically (all those years of not being a hypnotist were finally paying off).

"Detective Guffey," he repeated, even though once would have been enough. He must have had kids.

"That's my name," I said, "And profession. Although not in that order."

Now that I could get a good look at my captor's face I thought I recognized him but I was wrong. He was third banana in an unmemorable bunch of low-tiered thugs known internationally as 'Hey, it's those guys'; right between Joey "You Look Kind of Familiar" Norris and Melvin "Didn't You Used to Work at Borders" Washington. No way to tell who he was.

"Someone's put out a contract on you."

"I didn't sign any contract."

"It was verbal. You don't need a signature for a verbal contract."

"Tell me about it," I said. Either he thought I was being rhetorical or he didn't, but I never found out what the contract said. It didn't matter; like a narcissist taking a selfie, somebody wanted me out of the picture. I had to think fast. And then act quickly. And I didn't have much down time between the two. "A verbal contract does have to be confirmed by a notary, otherwise it's based on a lie."

"It...it is notarized." He tripped over his words. It was very funny.

"I think you're lying," I said.

"I'm not lying!" he said.

"So you say," I said. "But you could still be lying," I also said. I was arguing him into a corner, all the more impressive considering our platform was round. "You know how this works. No notary, no contract. No contract, no nothing."

"Aha! A double negative! That means it IS something!"

"Yes, but working backwards from something still supports the claim that there's no notary. We can go around in circles all night. But at the end of the following day, it'll be your word against mine."

"Then that's how it has to be!"

"Fine. I'll go with 'Quetzalcoatl'. You?"

That was worth more points than he could handle. He dove off the merry-go-round and ran around the room waving his arms. It got the attention of the neighborhood watch from across town, who called the police. Within mere minutes, 257 to be exact, the pawn shop was surrounded by every officer in the precinct, including the undercover ones who were going to have to come up with some pretty creative explanations when they went back to their assignments. My captor got arrested on a 'failure to not be a criminal' charge while the Police Chief sent her best escape artist to untie me from the chair; he even got a round of applause.

I took a long walk without leaving the merry-go-round, trying to put the pieces together and bumping into the stupid chair every rotation. Something didn't add up. Everywhere I went, someone was trying to throw me off the trail. That, I expected, ever since I was a junior ranger in the Mean Scouts. But something was missing.

The trail.

I'd never accepted Miss Nomer's case. All I'd done since I met her was leave the office, forget my breakfast, do a whole bunch of stuff, and take a joyride on a metal turntable. Not once in that whole plot summary did I actively try to get to the bottom of her issue with the card.

A detective takes a case. Action. The underbelly of society tries to prevent said detective (because I said detective) from solving that case. Reaction. Detective overcomes the obstacle and gets back on the path of Action. Another Reaction. Action-Reaction, back and forth until a resolution is inevitable. What happens if the detective is never on a case but the underbelly doesn't realize it? They react. To nothing. Then the detective reacts. And the underbelly reacts. Then it's a series of Reactions with no goal. No trail. The senselessness of it all suddenly made sense. It was a dramatic moment for me.

I hopped off the merry-go-round and asked the Police Chief if it was okay for me to leave the crime scene. I startled her, because she hadn't realized I was still there. Not good. In this town, startling a police officer can land you an overnight stay in the lecture hall. I decided to play dumb.

"I'm dumb," I played.

She took out her notepad, drew a stick figure of me with a ridiculous expression on my face, and sent me out of the pawn shop with orders to not do it again. I ran to the nearest bus terminal, which was forty-seven miles away, and asked if the ticket seller if she wouldn't mind calling me a taxi. She did mind, but she hailed one for me anyway, completely missing the opportunity for a classic punch line.

The cab pulled in front of the ticket seller and I climbed into the back seat. "Where am I taking you?" asked the driver.

"To see a friend," I told him. His dumbfounded expression kind of irritated me. "Haven't you been paying attention?"

"I'm actually on my way home from a different story," he explained.

"Oh, sorry. Hospital please. Vinnie and I have some unbegun business..."

Chasing the Rabbit: Chapter Twenty -Cat and Mouse

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Under ordinary circumstances, having Daffy Duck on your side meant that you'd doomed yourself to the losing side. And indeed, the main office had already dealt with an entire afternoon of no discernible progress before the duck had shown up with unrelated opinions about everything from the FastPass system to the arrangement of staplers.

Mickey was the highest authority in the office, and he wasn't particularly adept at interrupting someone who wouldn't shut up. As such, Daffy had the room's focus and showed no signs of letting it go. Three minutes in, the chipmunks dragged over one of the largest binder clips the office had on hand and motioned to Mickey that they were more than prepared to snap it shut on the visitor's beak. The mouse gave them a horrified look, which eliminated the easy solution. The munks shrugged and left it to their boss to come up with a backup plan.

Mickey tried to make eye-contact with Porky for assistance, but the pig had spent the better part of his career learning the art of passive resignation. He turned to Sylvester next who gave him the 'just wait' index finger gesture. Mickey mouthed "For what?" but the cat only gave him a comforting nod.

As much of an obstacle as Daffy was being, he was inherently charismatic about it. So much that nobody realized they were hearing the loud clack of approaching heels on the hallway floor until Madame Medusa burst into the office. "Where is Oswald?" she bellowed.

The intrusion stopped Daffy mid-sentence. But before he could say 'oh no she didn't' Mickey dove into the lull. "Well, see, the thing is, Madame Medusa, Oswald hasn't, you know, come back yet-"

"Then he's out! Give me the rat's contract now!"

"He's not a rat," Mickey muttered; one of the few times he'd taken offence to a comment.

Goofy chimed in. "Gawrsh Miss Medusa, you know tha' rules. Ya can't fire someone if ya can't find 'em."

"You have one minute to put Oswald's contract in my hand-"

"Or what?" snapped Daffy. "You heard the dingo! A rule is a rule! And you can't change a rule without changing the rulebook! Every rulebook will tell you that!"

 She tried turning her attention back to Mickey, oblivious to the reality that you might interrupt Daffy, and you might ignore him, but nobody ever managed to do both. "What is this idiot saying?"

The duck jumped up in her face now. "I'll tell you what this idiot is saying, Wanda Wiggins! YOU have one minute to put the rulebook in MY hand or YOU'RE out of here! Done! Finished! Kaput! Capiche! Kapow! Capote!" He'd gotten her attention, and was only just realizing he didn't want it. "Wow lady, that is some ten yard stare you've got."

Under ordinary circumstances, Daffy was a liability. But these were not ordinary circumstances. In that moment, Madame Medusa's newfound fury with Daffy superseded her intention to oust Oswald.

Nobody in the office did anything but watch as she dragged the duck down the hallway she'd just come from. "By the way, that's a stupid rule!" Daffy called just before he disappeared out of sight.

"How did you know?" Mickey asked Sylvester.

"I didn't know that would happen, but theeth thingth alwayth have a rhythm." The cat clapped his hands together, ready for action. "You care if we play through?"

"Gosh, I don't you what you can do to help."

Sylvester smiled. "Probably nothing. But it doethn't look like we can make it worth."

"Worth?" Mickey repeated. "Oh, worse! I'm really sorry."

"Nothing to be thorry about. Doeth the thimulation have any thchematicth?"

"Schematics? The hard drives have the pre-production, and Oswald's diagrams are in his office. But for some reason we can't get into the program itself."

"Well let'th have Porky go through the hard drive, and Wile E. look through Othwald'th offith. If you're okay with that."

"And what you need me to do?" asked Speedy Gonzales.

"You make thure we all thtay on the thame page."

"Si señor gato."

Rival studios never had any personal tension between them, but the addition of a corporate layer added a massive and complex legal slate to the mix. Mickey knew he was putting more on the line than he ever had before by agreeing to this alliance. But people were in danger. And whether or not the business side would deem them worth the risk, the mouse truly believed they should.

"I guess that will be okay," he said. "I don't know what you'll find that we haven't."

Sylvester leaned in and lowered his voice. "There'th thomething I need to talk to you about privately."



Mickey's office phone was ringing when he and Sylvester stepped through the door. The incoming caller's I.D. was the red phone booth in the guest area; the one where only top tiered staff knew the code to dial out from. "I'm sorry. I gotta take this."

The cat took a seat in one of the comfortable chairs and watched the world's most successful studio mascot awkwardly fumble his was through a mostly one-sided conversation. His responses were a series of yesses, I sees, and keep me posteds, while he forcibly kept his Disney smile firmly in place. The stress in his eyes told a more accurate picture. Sylvester made a mental note that it might be profitable to challenge the studio VIP's to a poker game somewhere down the road.

The mouse hung up the phone and did his best to pretend everything was all right. "So, whatcha got?"

Sylvester grinned. As far back as the Schlesinger days, the Looney Tunes founders had gazed up at the Disney legacy with a resigned envy. Not so much that it ever reached the toxic levels that Daffy had for Bugs, but the weekend gatherings had been home to many a playful imagining of what it might feel like if for one moment they could one-up the Mouse House. Sylvester would be the first to ever one-up the actual mouse.

He gestured to the phone. "Othwald okay?"

Mickey tripped over a response somewhere between yes and no. "How did you-"

Sylvester produced an office folder, placing it on Mickey's desk but temporarily ignoring it. "Full dithclothure," he said. "We love you guyth. We love your optimithm and your perpetual belief that thingth will alwayth work out. We're not here to preth-th an advantage, or upthet your balanthe. You want to protect your rabbit, we want to pretherve ourth."

"And we really appreciate that. But you guys being here really might make things worse."

"Of courth it will!" WB was nothing if not proud of the chaos they tended to cause. "You need worth."

Mickey shook his head. "Not much worse."

The cat was right about him trying to protect Oswald. In light of Madame Medusa's recent tirade, Mickey hadn't wanted to admit he'd even spoken with Oswald, much less had any idea where he was. But both studios would lose if they weren't able to resolve the issue with the simulator.

"Okay," he decided. "The virtual island runs on this kind of..." How was he going to explain it?

"Adaptive programming?" Sylvester offered.

"Yeah, we all remember TRON. Oswald thinks it's reading Bugs as a virus."

"Incompatibility?"

"Something like that. He's going to test the theory using some of the old Innoventions tech."

"You think he can create an anti-viruth?"

Mickey jolted at the thought. "No! He'd never do that!"

"Could it fixth the problem?"

"It would destroy Bugs! That wouldn't fix anything!" It was a little disturbing how nonchalant Sylvester was at repeating the suggestion that it would in fact solve the Disney Studio's side of the problem. "Are you sayin' Oswald would do that?"

"Are you thaying he wouldn't?"

"He'd never dream of it!"

"My point exthactly." He slid the office folder over to Mickey. "None of you know how to think like an antagonitht."

Mickey opened the folder to find the formal invitation that Bugs had received in the mail to join Oswald's project. On Disney stationary. Mickey stared at it in disbelief. "He was invited?"

"You tell me. We found that in hith houthe."

"This can't be right."

"No. It can't." Sylvester leaned back in his chair. "I think you need uth."

"I think so too."



Jasmine was already scouring the debris of wooden planks piled against the outer edge of a small cave mouth when Frollo finally reached her location. The dust was still rising from the explosion. "Kronk!" the self-titled princess shouted.

An incoherent muffle came from within the rubbish. What had the idiot charged into? It looked like the remains of a storage facility; no doubt useless after the catastrophe.

Jasmine was now on the far side of the pile where Kronk's hand protruded. She took it in her fingers, feeling for a steady pulse. "Kronk?"

A few tones of his voice made it through labyrinth of splinters. "Somebody lose a cannonball?"

"We're going to get you out of there," Jasmine promised with nothing to back up her claim. She surveyed the rubble, presumably looking for the best way to leverage the upper weight. Frollo shook his head.

"Just leave the fool-"

"He saved your life," she scolded him, like he was some kind of infant.

"And that's relevant because?"

"It makes him better than you!"

He rolled his eyes. "Decreeing value based on circumstance now?"

"Yes. And if you want to stop being dead weight you could try to help me loosen one of these beams."

"Have you ever done any actual...princessing?"

Jasmine began a careful climb of the heap, doing her best not to shift any added pressure onto where she thought Kronk was. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Sacrifice-"

"Zip it Frollo!" He shot her a look, but she didn't have time for a staring contest. Jasmine crawled behind the most vertical support and propped her feet against it. "There's sacrifice and there's abandonment. The difference is convenience."

Frollo snorted. Let her highness waste her energy trying to topple the scaffolding. The cave mouth had drawn his attention. There were steps. Carved into the stone, but undoubtedly by human hands. He couldn't make out more than a few yards into the darkness, but a thought occurred to him. If the entrance had been protected by a countermeasure and Kronk had already set it off, whatever lay down there was now unguarded.

"You may want to move, Frollo," Jasmine called. "This is coming down."

"Gladly," he sneered.



This moment would forever be burned into Daffy's memory as the backdrop for his guest spot on "This is Your Life". In a matter of ninety seconds, he'd gotten himself evicted from the Disney premises; a place to which he'd not only been invited, but granted security clearance. But it wasn't a simple eviction. He'd been forced to wait outside the lobby for twenty minutes while security took its sweet time completing the procedure. He found himself sharing a bench with a droopy eared quadruped in an otherwise empty hallway; the quote "Welcome to the happiest place on earth" painted in bright colors on the wall across from him.

"Well this can't get any more poetic," he muttered to his benchmate. Only after a moment of eye contact did Daffy realize who the donkey was. He buried his head. "Egad."

"Have that effect," said Eeyore.

Daffy sighed. "I don't imagine you're being thrown out too."

"Nope. Appointment moved. Have to wait," Eeyore responded with a full rest stop between each sentence.

"I bet you're a delight on the late night talk show circuit."

"Wouldn't know. Never asked."

"You and me both pal."

Daffy thought he might try to sneak into Guest Relations to let them know that the character meet and greets were not exceeding his expectations. Here at the happiest place- why did they decide to call it that? Who was ever made happy having to draw from their 401K just to afford entrance to the parking lot? Was that happiness? Negotiating through a literal pileup of rented strollers, ungrateful gremlins, and hordes of seagulls straight out of Hitchcock's casting agency? It was a joke, and someone else was telling it.

Termite Terrace. That was the happiest place Daffy had ever been a part of. No expectations. No corporate contracts. Just chaos unhindered. "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery"; that was a picture he wished would never end. Apparently dreams did come true, just not for very long.

Abruptly he turned back to Eeyore, visibly surprising the donkey. "Let me ask you something. You worked your way into cultural iconography, right?"

"Just kind of happened. Probably be forgotten."

"Yeah, I get it, gloom, no pride, trope namer. But as long as generations of the entertained continue to exist, you're theoretically immortal."

"Suppose so."

"Day to day, how do you live with it? The general unpleasantness of being who you're destined to be?"

"Focus on what matters. Some times you make a difference. Someone else is a little happier, because you're you. And that's enough."

"I think," Daffy professed, "that you just bummed me out."

"Have that effect," said Eeyore. "It's who I am."

Daffy sat in silence. He couldn't fathom finding any comfort in the happiness of others. He knew it was selfish, but that's who he was. He was selfish. Always had been. There was no way around it.

It's who I am. He repeated the donkey's words in his own head. That's who Daffy Duck is. I'm incorrigible. I'm not someone who does what he's told. I don't cooperate. I don't play by the rules. And above all I don't WAIT for security to eject me.

One glance at the unobstructed corridor from whence he'd come was all the motivation he needed to take to his scrawny legs. He patted the donkey on the head. "Don't ever change." And without another word, he was gone.

Eeyore grumbled to himself. "I think I just unleashed a monster."

Continue to Chapter Twenty-One.
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Chasing the Rabbit: Chapter Nineteen -A Cold Welcome

Click here for the table of contents.

The long eared creature evaded Elsa's attempts to corner him. He was fast; almost disappearing when he wanted to. Were it not for the accompanying whoosh sound his speed created, both starting and stopping, Elsa would likely have lost track of him.

"I'm not here to hurt you," she promised.

"Says you, Blondie," the animal retorted.

Despite the fact that this large room sat in the middle of an entire cave system made up of molten rock, the internal temperature was much more bearable. Not cool, or even comfortable, but well below the miserable threshold Elsa had endured on her way there. Most of the heat in the room seemed to be radiating from behind the rows of monitors that lined half of the room's perimeter.

Elsa glanced over the screen images, presuming they were a similar form of magic that Maleficent had demonstrated. "You've obviously been keeping tabs on us all. Have I given you any reason to think I'm confrontational?"

"Listen hot stuff. I don't know you, and I don't know them."

Elsa took note of the fact that he hadn't made a sprint for the entrance behind her, as she really didn't have the means to prevent his escape. As casually as she could make the gesture, she coated about a third of the floor, opposite his current location, with a thin veil of ice all the way to the wall. "You obviously know something," she said. "Could you come out so we can talk?"

"Say, that's a great idea! Why don't I lay out the Ritz Crackers while I'm at it?" he sneered. "You got a bottle opener?"

"Maybe we can help each other," sais Elsa, taking a few cautious paces in his direction. "My name is Elsa of Arendelle."

"And I'm Lightning McQueen," he fired back, choosing to bolt again before allowing her to get a good look at him. Unfortunately the moment his feet touched the ice Elsa had just created, he lost any ability to steer, or stop (short of smacking against the wall). By the time he'd regained his bearings, he found himself surrounded by thin frozen sheets forming a temporary containment. He rolled his eyes, thinking himself capable of simply plowing through his cell walls. But with no traction on the floor, his feet only spun in place when he tried to run again.

Elsa shape appeared on the other side of the glassy barricade. "I'm also not here to be nice."

He began throwing a childish tantrum. For all she knew, he may have actually been a child. He was smaller than she was. Between the ears and the brown fur, she couldn't tell if he was a human in mid-transformation or just an animal wearing a sweater.

"I swear I don't know anything!" he insisted.

Clearly he was lying, as nobody would preemptively deny having information so vehemently unless they were desperate to avoid being interrogated. But rather than confront him head on, Elsa decided to let him open up by accident. "What are these images? Some kind of crystal?"

He stared at her, feigning ignorance as to what she'd just asked.

Elsa moved to the nearest screen and tapped on the glass. "These. What are they?"

"They're monitors," he muttered.

"What do they do?"

"Monitor."

Elsa couldn't tell if he was being snide or really just stating what he felt the logical answer would be. "What do they monitor?"

"The whole island."

On this, he wasn't lying. The monitors showed feed from every place Elsa had been on the island and at least thrice as many as she hadn't. But there was little sign of any of her friends. She spotted Jasmine running along a beach towards some kind of wreckage, and Frollo taking his time following her. On another monitor it appeared as if some woman Elsa hadn't met was carrying a child through a wooded area. No Kronk or Bagheera from what she could see. And no Maleficent. Had they perished?

Her eyes settled onto a single screen that showed Tarzan's face. His eyes were closed and there was no indication that he was breathing. It was impossible for Elsa to tell if the image was frozen or if Tarzan was simply no more.

"Where is he?" she asked the creature.

"I don't know."

"You've been watching these monitors. What has happened to Tarzan?"

"I haven't been here that long! She left me here and told me to watch everything!"

"Who did?"

"The horned lady," he whined.

"Maleficent?"

"That's her! She said if I did what she said she'd change me back."

Elsa examined her prisoner through the ice. He seemed to be trembling, either from nerves or from a temperature he didn't care for. "All right, I'm going to let you go. If you run, I won't chase you. But if you want to stay with me, I'll protect you from Maleficent. Agreed?"

He gave her a suspicious eye but nodded. And in seconds the cell of ice dissolved into mist which Elsa collected into her palm. The creature collected himself and watched as Elsa reshaped the mass into a crude topographical map. "What are you doing?"

"Replicating the island." Elsa mentally deconstructed every screen showing the outdoors, figuring out where it was in relation to the island and adding details to her translucent model. "What are you exactly?"

"I'm just a kid."

"Did Maleficent change you?"

He shook his head. "I just got into the wrong stuff at the wrong time. There were a whole bunch of us. One minute we were running wild at a carnival, and the next every friend I had started turning into donkey."

"A donkey? Is that what you are?"

"Only half. I stopped drinking the brew."

So, a brew that could turn a child into a donkey. That seemed a little far-fetched to be true, but also a bit too absurd to have been made up on the spot. Elsa didn't entirely believe him, but she had no reason let him know of her doubts. "What's your name?"

He answered halfway between a question and a statement. "Alex."
Elsa finished her simulation as best as she could. She had the shape of the island in her hand, and several major landmarks. There were several ambiguous areas that the monitors hadn't covered, but all things considered it was a pretty useful display. She closed her eyes took in the geometry of her creation, feeling its complex outline in such a way that she could reproduce it later.

Confident enough with her spatial memory, she held her design out to Alex. "We're somewhere underneath this mountain here," she said. "And we need to get to this beach here, where Jasmine and the others are. Do you happen to know how to get back to the surface?"

"You mean without having to go through the lava cavern?"

Elsa nodded.

He thought for a second. "There's a metal pipe with those things on it that you can climb. She told me to stay off of it."

"Then that's where we're going." She dismissed her island into mist and gestured for him to take the lead out of the room. As soon as they were a comfortable distance away, Elsa waved her hand across the whole area of the monitors, coating them in a wall of ice.

"What are you doing?"

"I doubt we'll be coming back here, and I'd just as soon not leave these lying around for anyone else to use."

"But they're electrical!"

His protest came just a few seconds too late. Elsa tried to dismiss the glacier she'd been building, but the screens on the end were already starting to crack. A buzzing sound emitted from within the glass that she couldn't possibly have anticipated. "Oops?" She turned to tell her companion to run but he was gone. She barreled out of the room in the direction she'd been pointed, covering her ears from the first explosion.




The security alarm deafened the collective skulls of the four animals who'd gotten stuck trying to squeeze through gate all at the same time. Porky got free first, having been shoved forward by Sylvester. Daffy shook himself back into awareness and jumped on top of Clarabelle's desk, leaving Wile E. Coyote to drag himself off the floor, as he'd wound up on the bottom of the dog pile.

The duck pointed accusingly at the cow, who kept pretending to file her nails rather than acknowledge him. "Listen Elsie! I'll have you know we were personally requested, begged if you will, to fix your system glitch!"

Porky rolled his eyes. "Y-you're gonna guh-get thrown out."

"Nah, it's Disney," Daffy said. "They give you free stuff when you complain." He proceeded to give Clarabelle a scolding about how her people called his people and even if they weren't people they were called people and if people were people they why should it be the two of them should get along so awfully before realizing he'd lost track of his own stream of thought. He scowled at his companions. "Why does nobody ever stop me from talking?"

The heavy thud of footsteps followed by Pete's unmistakable bellow prevented anyone from answering. "What's goin' on 'ere?"

Daffy instantly regained his faux confidence and hopped back down to the floor. "I'll handle this," he assured his compatriots.

"We knew you would," Sylvester muttered.

Daffy proudly threw his shoulders back. "All right Buster!" But his challenge of authority was met with the uncomfortable realization that he was not in fact staring Pete in the eyes, but the kneecaps. He had enough time to tilt his head upwards before a huge gloved fist wrapped around his neck and pushed him against the security gate, which instantly went silent. "You know you're a lot bigger in person?" Daffy wheezed.

"An' you got one awfully big mouth chump."

Sylvester snorted. "That'th why we don't thtop him from talking."

Daffy tried to produce his security pass, but grabbed a loose post-it note that had stuck to his feathers by mistake. Realizing the error, he hastily scribbled an unconvincing self portrait with the words 'diplomatic immunity' on the note and presented it with a long shot of hope. Pete was not amused. he crumbled the note in his free hand and pulled back for a left jab.

It was a foregone conclusion that Daffy would have been out cold for the next hour or so were it not for the timely appearance of Speedy Gonzales again. "Senor Pete, we're from the Warner Brothers studio. Senor Mouse asked us to help get the conejo out of the embrollo."

"Da who outta da what?"

"He'th thaying," said Sylvester, "that your thtudio athked our thtudio to athitht in athething the theverity of the thituath-h-hion."

Daffy sighed in defeat; he HAD to be doing that on purpose. Eyes turned to Porky next who just shook his head and kept his mouth shut. It was Wile E. who managed to defuse the situation. Through pantomime; about half a minute of a bizarre sequence of crouching, lurching, springing, and a brief foray into soft-shoe. What, exactly, he was conveying was lost on Daffy, and the other Looney Tunes showed no comprehension of the plot. But by the end of the routine, Pete had apparently gotten the gist.

"Oh I get it," he said. "Yeah, we've been expectin' you guys."

With that, he discarded the duck and motioned for everyone to follow him. Speedy shrugged and shot down the hall followed by cat, pig, and coyote; who gave Daffy a smug eyebrow waggle.

Clarabelle continued to ignore him as he tried to relocate his dignity and ponder what in the Maltese Mantis had just happened. By the time he got to his feet, Speedy was back. "Hurry duck. You getting left behind."

Daffy grimaced. "How come you didn't set off the alarm when you came through?"

"Too fast?" Speedy offered. And was gone. And was back. "By the way, you're welcome." And was gone again.

"Shut up," Daffy grumbled.

Continue to Chapter Twenty
Return to the table of contents.

The Flightless Bird Pride Parade (A Metaphor)

I recently had the experience of hand feeding an emu. I've tried feeding an ostrich before and gotten my skin pinched (no fault of the ostrich), but surprisingly the emu was much more precise in its ability to remove dried out popcorn kernels from my bare palm.

I'd like to pretend that I'm bringing this anecdote up because of a certain empathy I imagine I have for flightless birds; knowing that you have wings and a tail in all the right places but for whatever reason you just can't do the one thing birds are historically known for. Yeah, I could probably make a decent argument for opening the blog this way, but the truth is very different. See, whenever I share my blog posts on Facebook, a snippet of the first paragraph always appears with the link. And frankly, I'm happy to let the whole world think that I'm blogging about emu feeding. Obviously I'm not.

I'm blogging about asexuality. I haven't wanted to. Ever. For me it's a subject that ranges from painful at its worst to irrelevant at its best, so I've never had any motivation to bring it up. But here with June being LGBT-ETC. Pride Month, maybe I feel compelled to address the elephant missing from the room. What exactly is asexual pride supposed to be?

Let's start with something a little more fundamental. How do you define asexuality apart from a lacking of something? Google will know. asexual: (adj) without sexual feelings or associations. Well that helped a hell of a lot. It doesn't seem like 'or associations' really adds anything helpful except making it sound more scholastic than 'without sexual feelings 'n stuff'. It's kind of hard to take pride in an adjective that technically applies to lower life forms like Protozoa and inanimate objects like snow shovels.

I don't know if you've ever picked up on this from films or magazines or rooms with more than one person in it but sex is valuable. In fact, a majority of social situations seem to equate attractiveness and/or prowess with value. What does that mean for an asexual? Do you grow up wondering whether or not you have any value?

So when it comes to a concept like asexual pride, what exactly is there to take pride in? I'm proud of things I've done, like written comedy, danced in a music video, acted in a silent film. I even have a twisted sense of pride about some things I've chosen not to do, like to never read a Harry Potter book. But asexuality isn't any kind of accomplishment or choice on my part. It just...I don't know...is.

And to piggyback off of other things I don't really know, I don't really know what the value of blogging about this is. It's certainly not making ME feel any better revisiting memories of things I'd just as soon erase from my history. I'm only writing about it at all because I have a kind and understanding wife; my biggest cheerleader who believes in me a lot more than I ever have. She wants me to be proud of who I am, and I'd never want to fall short of being the guy she sees when she looks at me. And who knows? Maybe my child self could have processed his asexuality better with a little guidance from the present me. And if that's the case, then maybe there's a chance some other me-like soul out there could stumble across this post and take something worthwhile from it. So here it goes.

1. You already suspect that something is missing. Somehow you just feel like you're different, even if you can't process for yourself what that feeling is, much less explain it to anyone else. And you're right to feel this way. You are different. I'm happy to tell you that it's not a bad thing (it isn't) but I don't expect you to believe me. Because it's going to feel like a bad thing. You're going to feel like you don't belong. Like something is happening around you that you just can't connect with. It's going to hurt.

2. Adolescence is going to make it worse, because it's a freaking roller coaster for your hormones; and not a fun roller coaster, but one of the old wooden ones that's at least a decade overdue for refurbishment. There is nothing that can be done about this. Adolescence is a test of endurance. It's not going to be who you are forever.

3. There's a big difference between being asexual and aromantic. The fact that you're one and not the other is going to be a huge internal conflict for you. You're going to crave intimacy, but you're not going to have the desire to express it through sex. You have three options. You can do what I usually did, retreat from the intimacy you want. That's going to be lonely, and you're going to risk convincing yourself that nobody wants you, but it let's you at least feel some control. You can also do what I occasionally did, embrace the moments where you can experience the intimacy you desire by faking the desire that you're not interested. These are going to be mistakes. Probably mistakes you're better off making than not (remember, adolescence is when you're bound to screw it up), but be ready for a broken heart and some damage to other people you leave behind. And you can do the thing I only did once, be honest about it. It's a complete relinquishing of control and you'll never feel more frightened by the vulnerability. That's terrifying, but it's real. And isn't that what you ultimately want?

4. Asexuality affects how you feel and how you view yourself, but it has much less to do with how the world feels or views you than you'd expect. For example, it doesn't serve as a shield to being sexually assaulted, even at the age of twenty-nine. Don't be surprised if it takes you a few months to realize that's what happened to you.

5. Never underestimate the value of being trustworthy. It's possible that your asexuality is going to allow females to view you as approachable, even if it's not for romantic purposes. I don't know if it's a simple cause and effect or if it's just a factor. But know this, when one of your female college friends reveals to you that she's been raped, and she's telling you that while she's alone with you in her own dorm room, that is a big fucking deal to her. Never forget that you were the guy she was willing to open up to.

6. And this last thing is the most important. There's a very real possibility you might wind up alone. Asexuality may aggravate that fear but at the end of the day it's not the cause; everyone has the potential to wind up alone. The pain of isolation is heavy, and it's natural to want to blame it on something. Asexuality is a convenient scapegoat, but don't. You didn't choose this and it's unrealistic to judge the quality of your life against the hand you haven't been dealt. Stick to the one you have. And that hand has an advantage that you may not be aware of until it's no longer relevant. Do you know what's worse than being alone? Being with the wrong person. And do you know why people wind up with the wrong person? Well, any number of reasons, but at the top of the list is because they've made a dramatic decision using the wrong organ. You won't have to worry about that.

If you are blessed enough to find that right fit, you'll know. For the first time in your life you'll feel truly like you. The pain doesn't just go away, but at long last you'll allow it to surface. You'll cry, and your special one will be in front of you with open arms and a genuine smile of encouragement and acceptance. You're loved. I hope that happens for you. It did for me, and I know I'll get to hold on to her forever.