The Haunted Potato, or, the Tater From Hell's Crater, or The Spud of Blood

One day I sat upon the couch To rest, to sit, indeed to slouch While sitting I received a scare For twas then I saw a tater there! I could have said something from Plato Instead I said: "look! A couch potato!" But it glared at me with it's many eyes And I felt some guilt to my surprise For I had slain much of it's kin Opened my maw and shoved them in I got off the couch, said: "See ya later!" And left behind that glaring tater.

So, to the kitchen to get a drink
But I saw it there sitting in the sink
I did not know what to think
I stood and stared and forgot to blink
I spoke aloud: " I'm too old for this crud!"
I would not fear some puny spud!

But in my heart stirred cold fear
And I thought back throughout the year
Of potatoes eaten in many shapes
Some fries, some mashed, some whole like grapes
What if the taters were amassin'
Some sort of revolt and this: their assassin!

I felt not well so I went to bed
And saw a spud resting by my head!
I admit I gave a girlish scream
Yelling: "get back spud lest I get the sour cream!"
before I could threaten it with chives
I broke out into itchy hives

After that I could not sleep
As in my dreams potatoes creeped
I tossed and turned and soon I waked
Thinking of all those spuds I'd baked
While roasting had they become Fell?
Were these ones the Spuds from Hell?

This hour of night my spirits waned
Wracked with fear my soul was pained
How could I have been the cause
Of so much pain and so much loss
These taters were right to cross my door
Spoke the tater: "Nevermore!

Like some sick version of tortoise and hare
Where'er I went a spud was there!
So much guilt! So much pain!
A potato bug assailed my brain!
I must persevere! I must recoup!
Or find myself drowned in potato soup!

Twas then he came to be my shield
My Irish ancestor from the field!
In ghostly pallor he filled my sight
Patty O'Lantern who shone so bright!
And he spoke at me with his Irish lilt:
"Are ye daft ye shouldn't feel no guilt!

Ye got to know these are just spuds
They are no reason to soil yer duds!"
strong the words spoken in his brogue
Strength to spirit from this rogue
He slowly began to disappear
To my surprise he took my fear

And in it's place a new resolve
This was just one more problem to solve
I went to the kitchen to get armed
And go to war 'gainst those who were farmed
I grabbed a cleaver and a fork
And then sat me down and got to work

I sliced. I diced. I julienned.
I was like a man possessed my friend
I chopped all night without lag
Til soon I hit the bottom of bag.
I was done! The battle won!
Now there was no need to run.

I cleaned the kitchen to the last knife
I was not brave enough to ire the wife.
Twas then I fell almost to the floor
For they were not done. There was one more.
This the leader upon my soul
This was the spirit of tater made whole!

It breathed cold fire from it's peel
All my heat it sought to steal!
It's eyes burned with malice, see
I do not lie this no fallacy!
This the tater who sought my end
I thought I was done my friend

But my spirit surged again with hope
And I thought me of a way to cope
I had a chance to win this fight
To take the day and save the night
When an evil tater must be in your gullet
What else kills evil but a Magic Bullet?

I grabbed this Prince of Hell's Potatoes
Threw in some cheese and tomatoes
An egg or two to heighten taste
I had some left over that I would not waste
I cooked this food fried in butter
And made a breakfast like no other

So that's how it all went down
The Weekend of Possessed Hashbrown
If I could make a small suggestion
Do not repeat, the indigestion
Was almost as scary
As the battle, which was, Legen-
Wait for it, wait for it- dary!

 

 

 

Sent from my iPad

A Fly on the Wall… of the Microwave

Dear Solitary Reader: While my wife is forced to sit on the couch and convalesce I’m playing Mr. Mom around the house, and the meal quality around here shows the sudden change in chefs.

X-Tangent:  This morning I nuked pancakes from the freezer for the kids’ breakfast; I do not know how long they’d been in the freezer, and I do not care. No warm toast and blueberries from ma for you this morning kids, nuked pancakes and berries which I may or may not have washed. There’s yer breakfast, if yer hungry you’ll eat it.

I’m not even going to go into supper last night. Shrivelled chicken with a side of blackened rice accompanied by a wilted broccoli/cauliflower medley (heh, I can’t cook, but I can advertised.)

Y-Tangent: Another impact of this whole gall bladder thing my wife’s been going through is an increase in the amount of fruit in the house. And where there is fruit you will often find the fruit fly (which my brain persists in calling flute fries, and then imagines a ginormous French fry flute which my imagination then eats).

The fruit fly seems harmless, little guy likes to fly stops by the fruit by and by. But like all bugs, fruit flies do not come alone – they bring friends. Not even just friends, they bring acquaintances; not even just acquaintances either – they bring flies they meet on the way to my house.

Swatting of the common fruit fly is made difficult by two things: the density of the median weighted fruit fly combined with the force x mass = acceleration formula. This can be translated to mean the mass of air, which is denser than that of the average fruit fly, combined with the force of the swatting motion causes a sudden burst in acceleration pushing the fly out of the way of the harmful motion…  an excerpt from “A Treatise on Ineffectual Swatting of the Common Fruit Fly” by English Scientist Herd Fromme-Lately.

Intersection: So this morning as I’m prepping the pancakes (that is to say putting it on a plate and putting it in the microwave, I notice there’s a fruit fly in there. I’m not sure if he was in there all night, or if he followed the pancakes in: that’s immaterial (well to me, to the fruit fly there might be a poignant difference).

Now I’m a lazy bum and a horrible father but even I know enough to try and get the fly out before it lands on the food my kids will eat. And so I make ineffectual swipe after ineffectual swipe at this fruit fly, and for some reason its like the force of air created by my swipe actually moves the fly out of the way – someone really should do a study on these things.

But after a few swipes I did not see the fly. Here I arrived at that road in that yellow wood. I could go down the path less traveled by and make the kids something else for breakfast, or I could trod the well beaten path of “I don’t see the fly, ergo I got him ergo it is safe to nuke.” I took the latter. So far it hasn’t made any difference.

But as I type this I begin to wonder. For it seems to me I saw a movie once about a man trapped in a machine with a fly and he turned into a … well fly. I think it was called “The Bus that Couldn’t Slow Down”… or The Fly…

And so I wonder: will having nuked these pancakes in the same microwave as a fruit fly begin a volutionary process (I can’t tell if it would be e-volution or de-volution at this point so I shot for the middle).

For the next few weeks the Martin household will be on watch for something horrible, because if movie history lets me down (and it rarely does) one of two things is going to happen:

1. either one or both of my kids will turn into The Fly
2. or even worse, one or both of my kids will turn into Jeff Goldblum.

Kung Fu’d For Thought

Dear Solitary Reader: While my wife was convalescing from the parting of ways with her gall bladder last night I found myself in a rare position: sitting in front of the TV with nothing to watch. Taking advantage of the free month offered by Netflix.ca I hopped on to find something I like, but normally don’t think to watch with my wife sitting next to me.

The result? A kung fu movie.

Now its not that my wife doesn’t like Kung Fu, its more that when we’re sitting together deciding on a TV Show we tend to go to the middle of the spectrum for our entertainment, shows with something for everyone. She does not say to me: “Dear Husband, let us watch this show about how to applique a quilt using a butter knife and the help of elves.” Likewise I do not say to her: “Yo, babes, how bouts we watch dis awesome Kung Fu movie where dis guy punches dis guy in de head and his eyes fall out.”

Lately we’ve watched Warehouse 13 – good show with something for everyone.

Back to the story: last night I was surfing Netflix.ca for something to watch (btw, I’ll be dropping Netflix like a bad habit when the free month is over because I cannot find anything to watch on it) and finally I settled on The Legend of the Fist.

It started off promisingly enough. World War 1 setting with Chinese laborers fighting for their freedom. The hero of the movie runs wild over the enemy in eminently Kung Fu style. It hadn’t yet made me get up off the couch and mime the moves along with the hero, but all indications were it was going to happen (somewhere after the third beer probably).

Cut to China some few years later and then it happens: plot.

Before I knew it I was actually learning things about China and what happened in the period between World War 1 and 2. I learned. I felt dirty.

At what point have we as a race become so preoccupied with story that I can’t watch someone beat up minions for 50 minutes before making it to the boss and watching that capped with an awesome 10 minute kung fu battle of epic proportions.

I’m getting old because I’m about to say “in my day” but this needs to be said …. In My Day Kung Fu was Game of Death and the plot of the movie was that a guy was hosting a kung fu tournament featuring a lot of, you guessed it, kung fu.

Bruce Lee must be spin kicking in his grave.

If any of you reading this decide at some point to ever direct a kung fu movie, do me a favor… and put some kung fu in it.

My Glade Plug-in is Trying to Kill Me

Dear Solitary Reader: My wife is a big fan of things that don’t smell like crap. As such she’s made several efforts to hide the shameful smell emanating from the cat’s litter box.

When Strider’s driving in his Chevy and his pants are gettin’ heavy – he heads to the litter box. When Willow almost craps the pillow... she goes to the same place. I’m glad they have a place to go but on an especially warm day I can arrive home from work and be greeted by the wafting aroma of what should only be described as: “bidness.”

One of the more successful attempts my wife has made to mask the musk is the Glade... um... “Something or Other.” I can’t remember the exact name of this particular incarnation, and it’s about 25ft away from me so I ain’t getting up to go check out the name. All you have to do is place it at the source of the stank and that stank is gone forever (or until it’s time for a refill). At any rate whatever it is... it works.

And that’s why I’m not getting rid of it even though it’s trying to kill me. Here’s the story:

My wife and I are pretty good about exchanging household tasks. Our relationship is one of symbiosis: she cooks, I eat; I dirty, she cleans. The yin and yang of household activity. But occasionally I’ve been known to do my share and the other day my turn came up to be scoopin’ de poopin of our two favourite felines.

Pardon the pun but scooping the cat litter is often a crapshoot. You can go down there one day and be done in a couple of swipes of the scoop; other days it’d give the fifth labour of Hercules an... ahem... run... for its money. And until you take the lid off the litter box, you never know what you’re going to get... it’s like a box of chocolates that way... disgusting, icky chocolates.

So, as I said, this one particular day it was my duty to take out the doody and as I bent down to take of the lid of the litter box the Glade “Something or Other” released a gentle mist right into my face. I woke up three days later tied to some railroad tracks wearing a clown suit and singing “The Song of Caligula’s Horse.”

I didn’t make the connection until it happened the second time. When my turn to clean the box came around and once again the Glade Plug-in plugged me out by releasing its gentle toxic mist; this time I woke up in Tibetan town wearing lederhosen and still singing “The Song of Caligula’s Horse.” That’s when I made the connection.

The Glade Plug-in is trying to kill me. He Hate Me Bro.

But it’s still the best cat de-smeller we’ve used, so I can’t get rid of it. It’s like an arrogant but capable employee that insists on mocking me because it knows it has all the answers. Curse it! Until such time as something better comes along I’m stuck with it, but I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding the gentle mist – except for the other day when I found myself in the Amazon jungle wearing a chef’s hat singing “The Song of Caligula’s Horse” again...

Caligula's horse
Was a senator of course
And he always voted Neigh!

Old Age Pensive

Dear Solitary Reader: Every morning I drive to work and park my car in the parking lot near the building. I gather my goods and make the long, depressing walk to the building and in the back of my mind I notice a smell. It’s not a bad smell, its just a smell which for some reasons seem out of place.

All that separates me from the parking lot and the building I work in are about a thousand miles of desire to be somewhere else and an Independent Seniors Living facility. This morning I realized two things, both connected to each other. The smell I was smelling subconsciously was saltine crackers and the other realization? Old people smell like crackers. There’s no other explanation for it – well I guess it could be the cracker factory a couple of blocks over, but how likely is that?
 
Now before you go all “You’re a horrible person!” on me there’s scientific proof out there that old people like crackers. I haven’t looked it up yet, but I’m sure someone’s been paid to do a study on it. And really, if you’re going to smell like something, saltine crackers aren’t a horrible choice – it certainly smells better than a teenage boy, a stinky cheese or state of the union address. It’s directly tied to the amount of soup old people eat.
 
My mother was always trying to beat into my head the concept of respecting my elders and frankly, I never got that. Why should I respect someone just because they managed to get old? You can get old by just sitting there. Hell, I’ve managed to age and I’m about the stupidest person I know.
 
But when I go for coffee I see a lot of seniors around doing their shopping and I can’t help but think of all the things they’ve seen and all the stuff they know that I don’t. Now granted, a lot of stuff they know isn’t necessarily useful in terms of dealing with our every day life because we have more people, more cars, and generally more of everything than they do. 
 
I believe old people are able to endow the younger folk with one thing which we do not have “more” of than they did: common sense. If they’re willing to share their knowledge with you, learning from someone else’s experience has no drawbacks: you get to learn from their mistakes without any of the consequences (okay they may force you to sit among doilies and eat crackers, but its really a small price to pay).
 
I’ve come to the realization that being a senior should mean more than getting a discount on Tuesdays. Being a senior should, in fact, come with respect. That, of course, leads me to the horrid realization my mother was right, and if she was right about that she might have been right about other things…. Nawww.
 
Maybe its where I fall in the generation gap, but these days young people seem old, and older people seem young. Teenagers are doing stuff that I never would have thought of and every time I talk with people who are older than I am I feel like I’m talking with people my own age (but smarter).
 
But here’s the other thing I’ve noticed on my dead man walking shuffle from the car to the cubicle: there are a disturbing number of crows hanging in the branches of the trees about that independent living facility.
 
I’m not even old (though I’m getting there, because I like crackers, especially with salted tops) and that creeps me out.

Punching the Clock

Dear Solitary Reader: x-axis: Yesterday my son asked me if we could play MarioKart. I didn’t want to so I lied and told him I couldn’t find it (I know, I’m horrible, but you all do it or if you don’t, fine you’re better than me, I can live with that). Instead I suggested we play the brand new racing game I’d just picked up – with real race cars and everything!

“What’s that Daddy!? He asked. “Gran Turismo 5” was my reply. “That’s a great idea Daddy!” He said . So upstairs we went to plug in the game and race til our hearts were content – or until supper was ready, whichever came first.  We were off to the races.
 
Or were we?
 
See with pretty much every PS3 game I’ve ever bought there’s a point when you plug in the game where it tells you something or someone in the system needs to be updated – the hamster running inside the PS3 needs to do  another line or something – and generally the process is fairly quick. Not so much on this occasion. In the time it took to update the game my son and I were able to do the following:

• put lunches together for the kids
• put lunches together for the adults
• have a relaxing supper which involved my son watching a couple of episodes of Dora the Implorer (that’s the one where she whines for a new backpack and a less annoying sidekick) so its not like we wolfed it down.
• build a non-functioning robot out of Trio (he got it for Christmas and unfortunately it didn’t come with the “polar bear bones” fuelled power pack required in order to bring our creation to life). I still have hopes that putting the heart of a cat in there will do the job, but I just can’t catch my cat – he’s wily.
• I went to swimming lessons and proceeded to splash and flail in the water for 45 minutes.
• I stopped on the way home to pick up cat food (I’m hoping I can use the food to lure him closer and his HEART WILL BE MINE AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)
• Arrived home to find the boy being put to bed and the little girl long asleep.
• I showered to get the chlorine from the pool off and wash away my scent in the hopes of evading the cat’s super sense of smell.

At some point while showering the game finally finished doing its thing. My wife then proceeded to install a few things to the hard drive, which she’d started before I’d began showering. At some point the install then got to the 14 minute remaining mark. And there it stayed… 14 minutes remaining while we watched more than half of an episode of Hawaii 5-0. That’s’ about 25 minutes; we stopped the show halfway through as it was a fairly boring episode and the game still told us there was 14 minutes left.
 
Y –axis: For years I’ve suspected that my computer is lying to me. When I install a program, when I delete a large number of files, when I do essentially anything other than play Zuma Blitz on the computer I get the little Windows window telling me there’s x amount of time left. The problem with the x- number is: when the “2 min remaining” note is up for 10 minutes, its more frustrating than helpful.
 
The phone company tells you to be home between 8-5 in order to catch your service guy. That’s awful, but it’s a definite time frame. When 2 minutes remaining edges into the 3 minute mark you’re entering the realm of the unknown. It could be in the next second – it could be 4 hours from now. You just don’t know. That’s worse than sitting at home for 9 hours.
 
And is it just me or in recent versions of the Windows Operating system, have they gotten rid of the hour glass? That silly old hour glass never stopped turning. When you think about it, if you keep turning over the hour glass before all the sand hits the bottom, you’re just resetting the clock, and you ain’t never gonna reach your destination that way.
 
Intersection: As a parent there’s only so much time in a day that we’re allowed to waste, and when I spend my wasted time wasting time waiting it makes me want to go all “Hulk Smash” over the offending item. These manufacturers of technological items know they don’t know how long a process will take, but they’re afraid to tell us. GT knows if there is a warning label indicating a 4hr wait on the box I might not buy it. But they don’t want to say that so they offer us false hope with time estimations that don’t mean anything.
 
That’s right GT… I know you know where the MarioKart is, you can’t lie to a liar.

Reach Out & Touch Someone…

Today I walked into the lunch room at work and felt as if I were walking onto the set of a commercial. Of the five people in the lunch room all of them were plugged into their smart phones. I was the only one who’d brought a book.

  
At first I was going to wax poetic on how no one talks to anyone at lunchtime anymore. But then I realized that would be hypocritical because I couldn’t remember the days when people talked to each other in the lunchroom because I never talked to people in the lunchroom – I’ve always brought a book.
 
But really, if I were a non-reader, think how my world would have changed.
 
Way back in the day (like 5 years ago) if you weren’t a reader and worked with a bunch of people you disliked, or detested or had nothing in common with, you were hooped. As a reader you always got the odd look, a mix mash of contempt for your choosing to read over socializing tinged with respect you were brave enough to read in public. But if you weren’t a reader you sat and were at the mercy of having to listen to coworkers natter on about their kids, their cats or their home reno projects.
 
You hated the person with the book. You wanted to take that book and beat them with it; and then, when you were exhausted in the unplanned activity, you realized what you wanted most was to be reading that book.
 
But now, thanks to smart phones, which is a misnomer because the phone is only as smart as the person who uses it, Husky Joe Lunchbox doesn’t have to listen to Patty Poundcake talk about her latest cuisine creation because Patty is actually talking to all her baker friends on her Google group; nor does he have to nod in time to Spencer Sportsguy as he talks about how his favourite team did because Spencer is watching highlights on ESPN.com on his phone and picking players in his fantasy league.
 
Our Husky hero is no longer at the mercy of Dora Daycare as she talks about how her little Jimmy is growing again and got 5th cello in his kindergarten Easter play as she compares notes with her Mom’s group and schedules Jimmy’s birthday party – because we’re certain there’s an app for that.
 
Husky Joe no longer has to listen o any of these people, but Husky Joe is now experiencing something he has never felt before – loneliness. Husky Joe, who still can’t bring himself to read a book (because it’s what nerds do), finds himself awkwardly lonely. He misses Patty’s recipes, to the point where he’s almost willing to admit he’s tried a few; he misses Spencer’s Sports Spout – to the point that he’s started watching baseball just in case Spencer brings it up again. He’s not at the point where he misses Dora’s dialogue, but he’s getting there.
 
Husky Joe is about to reach a breaking point: he’s about to initiate conversation.
 
I wonder if smart phones are changing society. Is there some great societal affect to being closer to people on other continents than in our own work place even though its not in a physical sense? I can’t answer that as I’m not an anthropologist (I have a real job) but will history look back on us and see this as a time when technology began to subvert physical proximity? As we in the precursor years to Skylab?
 
Smart phones are wonderful things, don’t get me wrong. I have one and I use it. But perhaps it says something about me that I use my smart phone to read The Three Musketeers, on a book reader app when I forget to bring my book to the lunch room while Husky Joe Lunchbox looks out the window at the snow falling, looking for something to say that will tear people away from their phones.

You know what it says? I’m really anti-social.