The Misadventures of Sputnik

Sputnik in her natural habitat

Lakia, the intrepid pioneer of the Soviet Space Program

The contents of Sputnik's stomach
(she vomited at least this much prior)

I've gutted deer with smaller incisions

Sputnik is a twenty-four pound Whippet / Jack Russell hybrid, (mongrel) I obtained from the Jerkwater County Humane Society and Livestock Auction about a month ago. She was summarily stripped of her reproductive organs and implanted with tiny microchips so she could be tracked and monitored, via satellite, by The NSA and various other Government agencies. I believe she is a direct descendant of Lakia the little dog the commies launched into space in the sixties, becoming the first Earthling to ever slip the surly bonds of the green planet to briefly float among the heavens. The little, unwitting space dog orbited the planet several times before plummeting back to earth in a fiery semi-controlled crash landing, into some Godforsaken Russian swamp.

When I’m away collecting aluminum cans and scrap copper, the dogs are housed in the garage. Sputnik and Mudflap spend their days licking themselves and discussing the merits of various brands of dog foods, current events and international politics. In the interest of her comfort, I supplied Sputnik with an old sleeping bag to lie on which, unbeknownst to me, she promptly ate.

Last week while I sat reading the latest edition of Ladies Home Journal, Sputnik stood, arched her back, and vomited a large pile of polyester and nylon on the living room floor. I thought, ‘this can’t be good,’ and continued my reading. The next morning she puked once again, this time along with the polyester and nylon, a small offensive glob of semi-digested dog food was also deposited. That evening Sputnik followed up with a puddle of vile liquid with traces of synthetic fabric and a Belgian waffle. As I cleaned up this latest nauseating mess, contemplating a hefty vet bill, I wondered why the hell I ever acquired this little pain in the ass mutt. Mudflap and I were doing just fine without her. Nevertheless, I made an appointment and took her to the vet.

Housed in a dilapidated block building on the outskirts of town, the Jerkwater Animal Clinic looks like a bombed-out Afghani school house, and once inside smells of cat piss, Lysol and death. I related Sputnik’s symptoms to the kindly horse doctor and he took her back for X-rays. When he returned he put the results of her stomach X-ray on the screen. It seems Sputnik was especially fond of fasteners, because about eighteen inches of zipper and a several snaps were clearly visible, along with a large wad of undigested sleeping bag stuffing.

After all said and done, many stitches and six-hundred dollars later, the little shit is recovering nicely. Seems that despite her suspected ties to the Soviet Space Industry, Sputnik is no rocket scientist. Her outlook for a full recovery is promising and she should do fine if I can just keep her from ingesting camping equipment.

The Early years: 1960's New Jersey

A mostly true retrospective recycled from the shredder.

I haven't always lived in Jerkwater, in fact I spent most of my early childhood in the much-maligned state of New Jersey. I would like to take this time to share some of my early recollections of this wonderful but misunderstood region.

New Jersey is built upon a swamp, teeming with disease and parasitic insects. I grew up on a dead-end street, which was bordered by deep, weed-choked ditches, their bottoms containing stagnant, foul-smelling water where mosquitoes and malaria flourished despite the industrial runoff. At night the sewer rats would emerge, wet and covered in grease to skin their teeth at the unwashed and frightened children.
My first memories were of that dead end street, lined with tiny houses, each one with a front stoop, where the wives of factory workers would gather to smoke cigarettes and gossip, telling lurid tales about the unfaithful whores who lived on the next block, and speaking in hushed tones of birth control and vaginal discomfort through nicotine-stained teeth. It’s where I first learned to ride my bicycle, careening up and down the street, gaining speed and confidence, while the Catholic children would hurl epitaphs and rocks at me as I raced by the front lawn flamingoes and plastic Virgin Marys.

To combat the summertime mosquitoes, the city periodically sprayed DDT from tank trucks, the Negro driver would smile and wave to the children as we ran into the street to play and dance in the misty vapor. Later, while Sinatra serenaded us from the AM radio, our lips would turn blue and our gums would bleed. Mother would rub liniment on our chests against the racking cough and worry over the listless, distant look in little brother‘s eyes. Nikita Khrushchev always glared at us from behind the bushes and newspaper headlines, his face fierce and monochromatic. Uncle Vankey visited from across the ocean, his face gaunt and drawn from stark Collectivism, and the little girl next door died in her sleep from a mysterious illness.

In the evening, the day-shift men would return from the factories in their Fords and Pontiacs, their blank faces empty as their lunch pails. They’d read the newspaper then get quietly drunk while watching the ball game as the purple sun, filtered through a haze of factory smoke, sank low in the western sky. The sewer rats stirred in the ditches and rubbed their whiskers, preparing for the night shift.

After the children were put to bed, husbands would grunt and sweat as they dutifully mounted their reluctant, consecrated wives, engaging in the brief and passionless sex of fenced livestock, then promptly fall asleep, drooling beer-laden saliva on the white sheets. As Ed Sullivan’s muted voice droned on from living room television sets, the sleepless wives would clutch their rosary beads and weep silently.

For Sale

Nice older off-road bike

One owner (RIP)
Engine's strong, but transmission shot

Beautiful bike, everyone who sees it says, "Holy Crap!"
Gas tank may have slight leak

 

 

 

 

 

Call BR-549

 

 

 

 

Don't Try This at Home

A brief treatise on this wild roller coaster ride we call life. (And why is there a Pringles can mounted on his handlebars?)

The intrepid rider is sized up and strapped in for the long pull upward through the dark tunnel. Nine cogs on each gear click loudly and echo off the blood-moistened walls ‘til he breaks through into the light and is sent plummeting between electrically charged steel rails on decomposing cross ties of dubious character. Time and space collide into a singular, spinning cyclone of swirling colors, like a box of Fruit Loops in a cosmic food processor.

As he nears the bottom, time slows and the cross ties become soggy with moss and wood rot. Needles pierce his liver and spleen and rust creeps into his joints. The steel rail serpents rise up and spray their electric venom, laced with toxic reproof and barbiturates, causing stomach-cramps and blindness. He slumps over the tank and topples to the ground, coming to rest on the dirty carnival floor amongst discarded cotton candy and empty boxes of circus peanuts.

Uniformed officers and stretcher bearers arrive, their skin scraped pink with the jagged lids of pickle jars, to haul him away on a flat bed ambulance. He’s cited for improper eye protection, loud pipes and failure to use turn signals. After a summary trial, he’s sent to the State Mental Hospital where he spends sixty days in a windowless room, lying on a piss-drenched mattress, staring at the claw marks etched into the plaster walls. Wondering where it all went wrong.

The First Thanksgiving

Found this wadded up in he shredder.

The Boat People decided to leave the oppression and slavery of European Totalitarianism where they were forced to live in dank, miserable hovels, watching Monty Python re-runs on 19” black and white televisions and spending their days in piss-drenched Monarchial squalor. They braved the icy chill of the North Atlantic with it’s hurricane winds and sea serpents out of the basic human yearning to be free. Against all odds, they landed hard on Plymouth Rock and scrambled up its sheer, hard surface. They stood atop and looked back eastward, upon the injustice and tyranny. The first months were difficult, nights spent sleeping in flea-ridden sacks, their days filled with toil, smoking hardscrabble reefer.

The powerful costal savages had been living an idyllic existence eating organic vegetables, constructing canoes out of fifty-five gallon oil drums and brutalizing the weaker, Hindu Indians with primitive stone weaponry and sharp, collectivist dogma which the used to eviscerate and cripple. They decorated their huts with the scalps and dried genitals of vanquished foes and turned their women and young boys into sex-slaves.

When the hazy days of summer gave way to November‘s chill the Pilgrims decided it was time to show the heathens how to party. The celebration began. Dead deer and diseased birds were piled high on picnic tables while beer and Nyquil flowed freely from birch bark vessels hung high in the trees. Young lads and savages played Frisbee and touch football in woodland clearings while a Polka band played dance music deep into the moonlit night. Young, fat squaws were fed Frosted Flakes and buttermilk, then dragged giggling and kicking into the forest to be courted, cajoled and injected with semen and syphilis. Small pox and intravenous engine coolant. A good time was had by all.

That small Jamestown settlement soon became a great and prosperous nation, complete with a mighty industrial base, interstate highways, political scandals, bungee jumping, Coldplay, breast enlargement, vaginal mesh lawsuits and clinical depression.

The Indians fared much better as they were pushed ever westward at the point of muskets and artillery shells, until finally coming to rest in Government reservations complete with house trailers and health clinics. There they made a living selling rubber tomahawks, plastic trinkets and tobacco products to fat, indifferent tourists in Chevrolets, and went on to find marginal employment in the glamorous, fast-paced world of the Casino Gambling Industry..

Monday Badass

My feelings about cats is generally ambivalent. I neither love nor hate them. I don't believe they should live in a domestic setting within the home, an excrement laden sandbox has no appeal for me. However, I gotta' give it up to my boy Shopcat VIII. He is a true North Amërïkän Badass. He terrorizes Mudflap the Wonderdog and ambushes all who pass before him from 'neath the juniper bushes, assaulting ankles and fatted calves with abandon. He is a hunter of the highest order and has decimated the once-bloated field mouse population. I've personally witnessed him eat a still-wiggling grasshopper in less than four seconds. He consumes sun-dried frogs and earthworms, crunching them in his mighty jaws.
He walks around with the presence of a Lord and has a disproportionally large scrotal sac which contain the mysteries of feline reproduction and the origin of Ted Nugent's chronic pyrexia.

Fence Sitters

While traipsing along a county road in Small Town Amërïkä, searching the ditches for aluminum cans and scraps of enlightenment, I encountered The Reaper and The Executioner perched upon a fence, discussing the grisly business of life, death and gourmet roadkill. Like a couple of small town lawyers waiting for a drunk driving case, a custody battle or a personal injury accident, they're drawn to the sight of blood and the pungent smell of radiator fluid on hot asphalt. They scour the back roads searching for hose clamps and the mangled corpses of careless night wanderers.

 

Death is a usurper, the ethereal absence of life. Death is a portal. Death is a coward. As I approached them they took flight on large, cumbersome wings, their grimacing faces flecked with dried blood.

"O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

  

Ram Tough

I've been watching, with fascination, as this truck is being slowly overtaken by weeds and mulberry bushes over several years. I'm sure it will eventually be swallowed up completely by Nature, rust, Big Gub'ment or Fiat, whichever comes first.


The Chrysler Corporation has been bailed out more than a leaky row boat in a thunderstorm.