Stuck

I was a pretty dumb kid.
No....that's the wrong adjective.
"Dumb" would be the word to use if I did the type of antics that got most young ones to be grounded for weeks...no television, no phone calls, no hanging out with friends. This was what usually troubled my parents seeing as if the rare moment where I needed to be grounded came up, they couldn't take much away from me. I didn't watch too much television, I hated using the phone (in which the feeling has never changed) and I barely hung out with friends.
Basically, they'd end up telling me to stay in my room....something I acted as though was an incredibly harsh punishment...harsh but fair. Then I'd get to my room and commence my regular after school schedule for the day, which involved me being antisocial.

Everything I had was in there, littered around underneath the bed, in a small corner closet and on my desk, which was supposed to be used for homework, but, shockingly never seemed to make it there. The desk was filled with tools for drawing, sketching, etc. and the drawers were stuffed with failed attempts. I stuck mostly to what enjoyed. I read books and comics, I had a ridiculous amount of sports cards that took up a good portion of the space.

Before my parents had moved in and called this their home, my room would have been the dining room for another family. The room had an entrance to the kitchen and to the back hallway, heading towards my parents' bedroom. There wasn't, what you would call, a lot of privacy in there, not that it really mattered. I wasn't hiding anything up until junior high school, where if my mother had even seen the cover of "Never Again", she would have sat me down with tears in her eyes and asked me whether I thought she was a bad parents. Seriously....this is what would have happened. I had a special cubby hole for my torrid affair with distortion, before we were able to make our love public.

I could, and did, spend hours and days in there.

So, "dumb" is not the word....maybe "ill-fated"?

Sure.....why not? That word will at least work in regards to what I'm telling.

My parents put up with my imbalances very well, now that I can look back two plus decades into my time before I had even turned double digits. I handled myself with an air of sarcasm so thick it can only be compared to trying to drive on a New England back road during a Nor'easter. It literally could and would not stop (some things in my life have not changed since birth...this being one of them). I didn't use it because I was a pouty brat not getting his way. I didn't bring it out when I felt intimidated by a situation. It just never stopped.

There was one particular evening at the dinner table that sticks out in my mind, mainly because it was a night where my infinite sarcasm brought me an ill-fated result. This was probably twenty one or twenty two years ago, deep in the heart of the eighties where, nestled snug in small town Dover, NH, we the McKenneys were all sitting down in the kitchen. This was rare, seeing as my father worked ridiculously long hours to make ends meet. He had never gone to college, so he was supporting the family of four on a high school diploma at around the same age as I am now. Elsewhere in the country, the night was just picking up, but for us, it was winding down.
I don't remember the dinner or any of the specifics. What I do remember is bringing my pattented sarcasm to the table. I'm not sure what was said, but chances are it was over the top and enough to drive my parents to send me to my room before the dinner was done. I acted pissed, but the truth is that my bedroom was right next to the kitchen. I'd be sneaking snacks for the rest of the night, so no worry about finishing the meal. Maybe that's why I turned into a fat kid. Wait....yes, that is exactly why I turned into a fat kid.
I got sent to my room. I just kind of sat on my bed, staring at the floor, not really paying attention to much of anything. I had a small nightstand which was a hand me down from my grandfather on my mother's side, Brent Shattuck. You know those old men that you can tell where a ton of both fun and trouble when they were young? Well, that was Brent. On cue at every holiday, there was this really loud whistle he'd do when I asked him. The main reason I always asked him to do it was that it hurt my sister's ears and made her cry. I mean, c'mon...I was a big brother. I was supposed to do that. So, I'd ask him to do it, he'd look around and make sure no one was in the room and then let it rip. Within seconds, my sister would hold her ears and scream, followed by my grandmother shouting at her husband, "BRENT!!!!". At this point, my grandfather would look like a scolded bloodhound. He'd hang his head, tell me not to say anything and then he'd hide until my grandmother gave up looking for him to shout anything more.
He passed away when I was in third grade. I never got the chance to learn how to make that whistle, though with my lack of teeth at this point, I'm not sure if I'd be able to pull it off even if I knew how.
He gave me this great nightstand. It was small, made out of oak and a perfect bedside table. There would be a lamp and radio on there at all times and, on the occasional well-behaved nights, would house a glass of milk and a pile of cookies before I was off to no-sleep land. The front consisted of two swinging doors with handles, that when opened had a small shelving unit to hold tobacco pipes along the side. Five holes on the left, four on the right, all to varying sizes.
This night that I had been sent to my room for an excessive use of sarcasm (normal for me), I found myself sitting on my bed near the nightstand, swinging the doors open and shut.
After a while, it became boring and I kept the door open, sticking my fingers into the small holes meant for tobacco pipes.

Meant only for tobacco pipes.

You see, my fingers were a bit thick for the holes. Once my finger would stick, I'd pull it out.....well, that's what you would think. No, instead, I pushed it in further, for no reason whatsoever.
I stopped, looked down at how far in my digit was and held my breath.

Yank.
Nothing.

again.....

nothing.

There really is that moment of panic when you do something like this. For me, it was trying to figure out how to shout out to my parents to tell them I was fingerbanging my nightstand out of boredom and got myself stuck.
"How do you do this?" I asked myself.
I finally settled for the casual, "Hey mom....dad?" approach. They came in the room and before they could say anything, I pointed with my free hand down to my new attachment.
They really didn't say anything for about ten seconds, the shock of their son pulling something this ridiculous beyond comprehension. My father was always the best to watch in these situations.....he always teetered on the verge of wanting to scream bloody hell and ask me if I'm serious, but instead always opting to just put his hand over his mouth and take it all in.

"Yeah......so, it's stuck. It's in there good...." was all I could really say. At this point all self respect had been thrown out the window.

They both remained calm in the next ten minutes, trying ti figure out the best approach to working out the finger. They brainstormed and came up with the following, all of which were used with no positive results:

shortening, soap, vaseline, canola oil......there were more, but these are the ones I vividly remember. Especially watching my mother lather up by finger in Crisco.

"How do you do this?" I asked myself once again.

Options were exhausted. There was no more loosening agents that could succeed. My father unscrewed the door from the hinges, so that at the very least, I was just sitting on my bed with the door attached to me instead of the whole nightstand. He finally looked at me, shrugged in the "this is all that's left" motion and said, "We're gonna have to saw it off, bud. You know that, right?"

I did. I knew it was coming to this. I'm not going to act like I wasn't worried, because I was. Saws are sharp, and eight or nine year old skin is not.

This is when the new problem arose: no saw.
It was gone. So the door that was stuck to my finger was not able to be taken out at home, because we had no saw.

Off to the emergency room.
Yup, really.

I put my jacket on (not fully of course....the door wouldn't fit through the arm hole) and my mother drove me to Wentworth Douglas Hospital, about a five minute ride from the house. I could tell she had no idea what to say. We parked and started to walk in the ER doors, with my mother asking me what I had been asking myself for the last half hour or so.

"How do you do this?" she said, shaking her head.
"It happens...." was all I could respond.

We walked up to the counter, about chin high to me, and the woman sitting behind it said hello.
"What seems to be the problem?"

To this, I simply raised my hand, door still stuck and dangling.

Her jaw dropped, her eyes bulged a little and all she could muster was, "Ohhhh....."

My mother responded with, "...exactly."

I was brought into a room where, for the next twenty minutes or so, it was very quiet, except for the random nurses who would pop in to ask if we needed anything, even though I knew word had spread and most wanted to come in and see the kid with the wood affixed to him.

A doctor made his way in and took a look without trying to laugh. He did, however, look straight at my mother and say, "You know how funny this is, right?"

Mortified, she smiled and nodded. "Not funny ha-ha, but funny sad...." was what she probably said to herself.

The doctor told us what we knew, which was that we needed a saw. He sent a nurse to go have someone bring one. The first person to come back brought a (I shit you not) full sized saw. The kind you'd use to cut down a goddamn redwood. I took one look and screamed. At this point, the doctor was trying really hard not to keel over with laughter. He turned to the guy who brought in the oversized remedy and told him something quite a bit smaller would do the job.

The saw came, the door was cut off and I went home, getting to keep the memento from the rather unfortunate series of events.

All because I can't control the sarcasm.

Sorry, mom. Sorry, dad. Sorry, grandpa for ruining your nightstand.

how to say "fuck you" in twenty five minutes:

"seizures in barren praise" is now mixed, mastered and complete.

for those that are interested in more than the one dimension of listening to a record, i suggest purchasing a copy instead of downloading it.
there are three seperate versions of lyrics to this record:
the written / lyric booklet version
the recorded version
and the live version(s) that will change every couple of nights

no...really
if you're going to make an artistic expression....make it worth it and continue to let it evolve into something more than a simple "write and repeat"

i'm not sure when a new song will be online, but you can expect it in the next month or so.
the record will be out in the fall and our plan is to tour from the beginning of september until the end of november with stops on multiple continents.
details are forthcoming.

soundtrack for the last week:
verse "agression"
torche "meanderthal"
ladytron "velocifero"
coldplay "viva la vida"
victims "killer"
world burns to death "graveyard of utopia"
furnace "doublewalker"
duffy "rockferry"
the black angels "directions to see a ghost"
nasum "doombringer"
mono"you are there"
pelican "city of echoes"
boris "smile"

since i've been home i've read some pretty great books:

the best revenge by stephen white - i like mysteries...this guy is going to be a new member of my literary candy jar

the secret life of Laszlo, Count Dracula by rodericke anscombe - forensic psychologist becomes brilliant author. so beautifully written, i'll probably read it again before the summer's over

insomnia by stephen king - when you're going to read 800 pages, you need to COMMIT....i've had this for a year, but finally found the right time...well worth the wait

currently: bag of bones by stephen king - with about 150 pages left i'm willing to say this is my favorite novel he's written

i'm on a stephen king kick this summer. next will by Desperation folowed by The Regulators, though, i first have to read Prime by Poppy Z Brite to finish up all of her "liquor" land writings.

this whole post was just supposed to be a line or two....go figure