Stupid Todd and his death wish

So a couple weeks ago Todd died. He had forgotten to bulk up for winter hibernation, and his body went kaput at the first cold snap (apparently he'd been on an America's Funniest Home Videos bender for a month or so and had ignored his body's primal instinct to gorge itself during autumn). His dying request was that I film me hitting his corpse over the fence with a baseball bat and send the video to America's Funniest Home Videos. I did, and this morning some police came to the door. Apparently squirrels getting clocked with bats raised a few red flags. I guess if I'd thought about it I would have realized that that's kind of a perverse thing to send to anyone...but when it's Todd it just seems like another funny PCP party trick.

Anyhow, Lyle got the door and I listened to his conversation with the cops from behind the couch. It went kind of like this:

LYLE: SooooOOOO! It's YOU again!

COP 1: Sir, are you Téodor Orezscu?

LYLE: Do I look like that fat pussy to you? Tell me now. Say it to my face, asshole shitwad. I fucked your mother and drew a daisy on her ass. [spits]

COP 1: There's no need for this kind of behavior, sir.

LYLE: Oh yes there IS! [sound of bottle breaking] ACE OF SPADES!

COP 2: Sir, have you been drinking?

LYLE: NO!

COP 1: Does a Téodor Orezscu live here?

LYLE: What's this about, mustache-dick? Your partner here put his dick across your upper lip like a mustache? Is that why you're buggin' me? I already have a mustache, so NO THANKS on the lip pedro thing.

COP 2: We're investigating some charges of squirrel cruelty. Does the squirrel in this photograph resemble anyone you know?

LYLE: Nope.

COP 2: And this...[flips page]...is this Téodor Orezscu?

LYLE: Never seen that fat piece of crap before. Get lost. Both of you. Get in your cop car and go to your cop car parkin' spot.

COP 1: Have a nice day.

COP 2: Make sure you clean up this broken glass. It's a hazard.

LYLE: Fuck...YOUUUUUUUUUU! [door clicks]


So, I figure I've got to lay low for a while, and probably change the way I look pretty significantly. Should probably grow a beard...get glasses...maybe do the Hasidic Jew thing with the black suit and stuff...what are those corkscrew sideburns called? I think my great-grandpa Bliklish had a pretty rad set. Okay, off to Jew it up. The next time I see you, it will not be as Téodor Orezscu. It will be as...Herschel Schviz-Meskewicz.

Got kicked out of my one-man band.

I gave up on trying to learn how to use all that professional recording equipment. Too many dials, knobs, sliders, cross-faders, modalities, and unlabelled function keys. No user interface design to speak of. More Enigma machine than envelope, if you follow me. Every time I stood in front of it, I felt like Dave at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, presented with all those monolithic lucite "buttons." One wrong push and the whole thing might blow up in my face. Suffice it to say, I won't be releasing any album that isn't a YouTube webcam clip of my left hand doing the chord changes to "Free Fallin'." Yes, I will be sitting on my bed. Yes, at the end you will see me get up. Off-camera, I will hit the space bar, which stops the recording. You will hear the first half of the click of the key. VIEWS: 17. COMMENTS: Yah that was good, chek out mine 2 :) [link]

What's new with me...I've been making a lot of bread. I uncovered a bread machine in the garage (a wedding present that had never been touched), and it's great. It takes the crappy part out of making bread (interminable kneading), and leaves you to just throw essentially free ingredients together, wait a bit, and then see what happened. It's like tossing a grenade over a hill, having a smoke, and then climbing over to discover that the grenade has turned into a lovely rosemary focaccia.

I've got a sourdough starter going right now, this yeasty slop that's supposed to sit out for three days and rot. The more I try to figure food out, the more I find that toeing the line between discoloration and dysentery is where real flavor lies. Should we always be eating food that might almost make us sick, in order to keep up digestive strength? There might be some wisdom there.

You know what? I've never had Limburger cheese. Or Liverwurst, for that matter. I'll be stinkin' it up tomorrow. For dessert? You guessed it. I'm going to eat a red onion like it was an apple. You'll know me — I'll be the guy swatting away vultures with a big diagram of Mitteleuropa.