After banging on my sticking space bar until I have
calluses on both thumbs, I turned my keyboard upside down and gave it several
sharp raps. The fallout looked like
dandruff. Didn’t fix the fricking space
bar either.
Ed Sullivan’s reaction was stoic. He pulled one hand out from his armpit and
made a floosy-style motion as if to summon a busboy to clean this mess up. Holden’s response was predictable:
“YYEEEEEEEWWWWWHHH!!” Squirrelly little fist
lover.
I swifterd the desk top with a mental note to really go down and buy a new
keyboard. This time, I mean it.
Well, no I don’t either.
Not right away, anyway. Months
ago, I placed an order for a gizmo that looked irresistible, even though it was
not yet in production. I know that
prepayment is probably helping the two young entrepreneurs to bankroll
production, but the idea is so enticing, I’m thinking of buying stock in the
company when it goes on the Big Board or NASDAQ or wherever.
A desktop gadget that augments the software that finally
brings to life the innovation that Tom Cruise showed off in Minority Report.
Remember the hand motions, to move and manipulate
multiple screen images?
This new deal will do the same deal. After installing the software, one makes a
couple of hand sweeps over the box, to ‘train’ the software. Thereafter, one can simply make gestures to
the monitor; and the screen will actively respond.
Cool beans, huh?
Unfortunately, for me, it’s more a matter of self-defense
in my perpetual feud with Billy Gates and the Boys of Microsoft. Let me explain. Before you readers have a
panic attack that I won’t explain. (Crapolah!…it
could happen!)
Down in the left hand corner of the Windows 7 logon
screen is an itty-bitty innocuous icon, just waiting for some gullible user to
click on it. (GUILTY!!)
Therein are little boxes next to five of Billy’s newest
treats for his user-serfs. Three I can’t
figure out what the fuck they’ll do. Two
were intriguing. Like a Venus Flytrap, I
was lured in by their sparkling bling.
The first was something called a ‘screen magnifier’. Okay--whatever.
The second doodad was an ‘onscreen keyboard’.
Cool! I clicked both boxes.
That was two months ago.
I have managed so far to lose the magnifier thingamabobby. I have
a 42” monitor. What kind of mouse turds would
I need to enlarge?
But the onscreen keyboard? Here to stay like Khrushchev’s hypothetical
cow. Tried every way but Sunday Prayer
to get rid of it…no toy in the Crackerjack box.
How bloody irritating is that? Pretty bloody, I can tell you.
After the MicroPatch Seven-with-gout boots up, which
takes only slightly less time than an Eastern Orthodox funeral dirge, I have to
right click and close that stupid program before I can see the rest of my
screen and get the hell on with trashing all yall’s heads with my daily trash.
But the solution is coming in the November UPS, Billy
boy! It only put me out $80 towards an
untried, unknown product to fix your geeky wagon! Now, when it gets here, I’m wondering if I
will have to lay my flat screen down flat, in order to twinkle my digits, to
make it work.
Poo. Another mid-life
crisis. I’ll just have to deal with it
when November arrives. Can’t focus on
this anymore today. It’s raining, the
lightning is keeping the Brigade in my lap and my face; and my nose has
snot. Lottsa snot. TMI.
Aver.
When last we spotted the young lad from Texas, he was
confessing to a hard on for murdering someone other than gooks. Killing gooks for God and Country—now that’s OK
in the Book of John Foster Dulles.
Here’s a perspective on the man: During the First
Indochina War, when it began to shape up as a French rout at Dien Bien Phu, he
recommended that we give them atomic
bombs, to bring ‘victory and colonial stability’ back to Viet Nam! Apparently, it was an option that was actually
considered.
However, that wasn’t in time for the finale of May,
1954. At the end of that month, the Viet
Mihn (later the Viet Cong) under the command of General Giap (Our nemesis in
waiting), overran the French Command Post, effectively ending the First War.
The Geneva Conference soon afterward endorsed the North
and South demarcation of the DMZ. By 1956, when neither side would get down to having
general elections, also dictated by the Conference, the stage was set for the
Second Indochina War, since become the American War.
So, by the time the Congressional Hawks were chanting
‘Nuke the Gooks!’ the phrase was already a catchy little tune ten years prior. Cool beans, huh?
It was only, I believe, the impassioned opposition to the
American War towards its last days that prevented the military from suggesting
to the politicians that Hanoi be nuked.
Instead, we unleashed the B-52’s on the northern capitol,
fully expecting that the table arrangement in Paris would be instantly
resolved, and everyone sitting down to the serious business of ‘King’s X! Gotta maintain the DMZ for a
while longer!’
With the same inscrutable patience with which Giap
planned his battle against the French in 1954, the diplomats in 1970 Paris
waited until the American withdrawal was a reality before negotiations began in
earnest.
These were the same guys who came to Geneva in 1954. They knew how to play this game; more to the
point they knew how to win it.
As the bombing of Hanoi and the machinations in Paris
took their toll, the waiting to be called to the Freedom bus became the main
thought among those of us still in-country.
Whatever form this thinking took, it was not spoken aloud; particularly
in the earshot of the guys who were short.
As people grew ever shorter, a strange phenomenon ensued:
no one said boo to them, as if they had caught something contagious. It was that deep-seated taboo of never
putting a jinx on a man’s good fortune by talking with him about it.
At least for me, when the days could be counted on one
hand, that was the worst time of all.
Death was still available and quite possible, up till my flight
departed. Everyone knew that. Every one
of us harbored an unspoken terror; to be killed in the dwindling hours of his
tour.
To alleviate those terrors, some geek somewhere came up
with the ten day stand-down before the Freedom Flight. A little time to assuage one’s premonitions;
a brief time in which to decompress. I
can almost hear some Pentagon geek using that word ‘decompress’.
The truth is they didn’t want guys from straight out of
the bush disembarking stateside and going berserk. Ironically, it was the people back home that
were going berserk—at the troops coming back to an alien world.
Which brings me to the Scarecrow.
I didn’t know enough about him to take a sloppy
inventory. He was the Senior Scribe in
the hole-in-the-wall; and he was short in-country. He was another corn fed
freckled son of the mid-West. And he was
straight as an arrow.
I wasn’t even sure if he drank. His daytime duty was Boy-Scout-of-the-Year
perfect. Although I was familiar with
him, through work and all; of his personal habits and lifestyle, I had no clue.
Stoners categorily rejected any casual contact with the
straights. It wasn’t safe. If they blew the whistle on your dope deal, you
could pass from one nightmare to another.
Oddly enough, each camp knew who was in the other camp; but left each
other be. It was good business to mind
your own business in Viet Nam.
People were armed and shit.
I was more acceptable to the straights because, to all
appearances, I looked and acted as they did.
No peace medallions dangling from my dog tag chain, no unkempt dress or
tousled hair, clean shaven; if one knew no better, I was one them from 0700 to
1700 hrs every goddamn day.
One day, I think it was early March 1970; the Scarecrow
beckoned me to join him outside of the hole-in-the-wall. “Cork,” he said in a conspiratorial Soto voce,
“Before I go back, I want to try smoking marijuana.” I was at once surprised at this request and
flattered that he would put his trust in me.
To him, this was like the local parson asking the town
rake to fix him up with a really loose slut to end his virginity. Without hesitation, I agreed and we arranged
the rendezvous for 1800 hrs at the far end of the causeway—the same spot where
Hanover had conducted his grenade festivities.
Lovely spot.
It was about this time that Earl the Pearl sent me a
C.A.R.E. package of immense value. I
opened an envelope to reveal two bright orange packs of Zig Zag wheat straw
rolling papers. Oh, for joy! The gooks rolled our ten packs with paper
that was either meant for recycling or the wiping of ass.
Not that we gave it much thought. We smoked our weed with the abandon of a
heroin addict using a dirty needle. Need
always won out over discretion. Well,
for just a short time, we could add a sort of false elegance to our noxious
deed; like a tramp who finds a barely smoked stogie on the pavement.
To triple our pleasure, we would lick and glue three
papers together and then roll the joints across. This produced a four inch chubby cheroot that
I promptly christened a Screaming Yellow Zonker.
I know, I know.
You’re thinking blatant plagiarizing of the candied popcorn of the same
name. Blood oath, I had never heard of
the snack when I came up with this. I just thought it up all on my own.
I approached Scarecrow at the appointed hour. He was out there at water’s edge, nervous as
a virgin on the verge of having his cherry popped. After he stopped looking about for the Drug
Police or his Mother or whoever; I took out one of my thick yellow doogies, lit
it and handed it over.
Gingerly pinching it twixt thumb and forefinger, he took
a monster drag and handed it back. I do
not know why we all seem to have this need to talk with a lung full of smoke,
but we do. The Scarecrow was no exception, “Y’know,” he wheezed, “Ah’ve never
done this before.”
I took my own monster hit, contemplating his revelation;
then the time motion thing switched from reg’lar time to time measured in
nanoseconds. As I held my smoke, I
looked past Scarecrow to see some unfamiliar Chief Petty Officer standing
there, with his hands held clutched behind his back, staring out at the harbor.
“Evening, men”, he said in that addressing-the-men tone of a non-com, “Nice
view out here isn’t it?”
Scarecrow immediately turned on his heel and began to
walk quick step back to the world. I
never saw him again after that moment.
He had left me to confront this lifer in that renowned cavalier gesture
of: Every
man for himself! Abandon ship!
I held the Zonker in my right hand on the far side from
the Chief, only ten feet away. He was
still looking out and probably waiting for the perfunctory response of ‘Why,
yes, Chief! Certainly is!’ or something. I looked down at the water. This wasn’t anything that resembled a
cigarette or even a gook joint. Floating
fresh in the water, it would have screamed ‘Demon weed from the Hell of
Hippiedom!!’ I couldn’t simply drop it; so I did the only thing I could do.
Half turning to my right, I blew out my lungful of smoke
so that it would drift past me, there being an onshore breeze and all, and
hopefully beyond the olfactory radar of the non-com’s nose. In the flow of the
motion, I put the lighted joint in my mouth and gulped it down. I could hear it sizzle as it hit my
esophagus. Finishing the motion by turning back to face the Chief, I said, in a
faint but clear voice, “Why, yes, Chief! Certainly is!”
Time-motion reverted to normal. Hearing the expected acknowledgement, he
shifted his gaze from me and went back to his observation of the sea. I took my
fucking leave without asking for it. As
I walked in a deliberate pace of nonchalance, my heart slowed down from the adrenaline
poke it had taken to avert a disaster.
You see why now we didn’t rub up against the straights? That was the one and only time I ever came
close to being caught smoking dope in Viet Nam.
I still have this nightmarish fantasy of gagging on that
Screaming Yellow Zonker, upchucking it, to land...and stick…to the toe of that
lifer’s boot!
‘Oh! Sorry Chief!
Lemme wipe that up for you!”
Turds in a box of candy!
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