Different Gifts: 'Tis the Season to KISS MY BUTT

From: hellpopehuey@subgenius.com (HellPopeHuey)
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Sun, Dec 8, 2002 9:25 PM

What constitutes a gift? Is it a physical thing you give, an act you
commit, a kept promise, the handing-over of a rare, long-sought rubber
monster? Is Santa the German bastardo who delivered no gifts, instead
dropping off switches for bad kids? The Jolly Elf who hawks plastic
crap at X-mess? The rotter who failed to bring you that all-important
BB gun so you could put out your little brother's eye? Did you get the
means to appreciate what you got and not sweat over that which never
materialized? Can you give someone a lift when they need it most? Can
you tell a warm spring rain from a cold steel rail, a smile from a
veil? Got discernment? Got milk? Got nipples? Hers are lovely. I have
three. I do a ventriloquist act with the middle one.

My old radio pal Blaze Brown spontaneously mailed me a pair of denim
shorts in the improbable and hard-to-locate Huey size, plus some blank
cassettes. Miz Thang said "He sent you WHAT?" Hey, don't look gift
pants in the mouth. Well, something like that. We're neither fruitbats
nor fruits nor batty per se, just weird. Its that Yeti blood, I tell
you. Sure, we're peculiar, but that's the luck of the genetic draw.
Blank tape I can fill with oddities and send off to other friends may
seem strange, but to the CD-burner-impaired, that's a beautiful thing,
so shuddup. To each his bone.

Small kindnesses count. Sometimes they don't get the credit they
deserve and are lost in the shuffle, the cold, the heat, the dark of
night. Don't fall prey to that too often, if you can manage; the
larger things ultimately rise or fall based on the smaller ones. I
have not found, often enough lately, that a kind word turneth away
wrath of strange sorts. I have seen that a harsh one at a key moment
has a bad tendency to reach beyond itself exponentially, my own
foibles included. Give 'til it hurts, don't hand out hard blows until
it yields too much hurt. If you don't fold previous Good into a
momentary, relative Bad, there are sad consequences. Some people are
hanging on by their fingernails. Your neglect or unexpected slash can
kill 'em inch by inch, Le Petit Morte, making the Big One seem
attractive in its closure. Redeem this coupon for a shiny new
redemption that turns the tide and fills an empty cup.

I remember an old "M*A*S*H*" episode in which an abandoned baby girl
of mixed Korean/American-G.I. parentage, despite the best efforts of
all involved, is ultimately delivered to a monastery for want of an
alternative. Korean society would make her the object of severe,
lifelong scorn and abuse; paperwork would not allow her into the
United States without the involvement of missing parents. Thus, she is
anonymously delivered through a hole in the wall to be raised and
educated by monks. What a dark rotation on the idea of a gift.

Consider the sideways gift of frustration to a bully. I first snapped
to it way back in a junior high drafting class. This one budding young
snot set his sights on me as a target and after a particularly witty
reposte, he growled "You wanna meet me after school?" The group
hee-hawed when I said "Where ya gonna take me, big boy?" Yeah,
developing a status as a smart ass has its drawbacks; I don't
recommend it as a daily thing, even for myself. Same to you.

Still, there is merit in reminding someone of the need to be aware of
others, to hold back a notch, to trade the quick blow for the
diplomatic touch before bringing out the long knives, especially with
a friend. It hopefully bestows the gift of awareness and paves the way
for future social success where otherwise might reside failure. Am I
the great potentate of worldy wisdom, gliding blithely through life,
delighting all? Hey, I didn't get these scars from always being on the
proverbial beam like a champ. I regretfully count the AssFace merit
badge among those in my collection. Just SAYIN', is all. I need to
follow my own advice at times, boy HOWDY, do I, sheesh. Sometimes,
bitterly-won enlightenment pays a meaningful dividend down the road.

The gods took pity on me after my years of struggling with crapulent
instruments and bestowed upon me this most broad and wondrous
synthesizer. In the film "Amadeus," Salieri finds a note he was
searching for, looks up at the ceiling and says "Graci, Maestro." My
composition process has been distressingly uneven lately, but when it
clicks, Bessie, bar the door! Haw! Graci, Maestro. Its a treat to dip
your feet in the Mississippi mud. Its an even greater one to rinse
that off and leave for a place where the local pay is better for
commensurate work, ahem. Failing that, I'll settle for a tool far
better than some of the wretched pianos I've owned, in which I would
not have buried a dead cat and I have little love for THEM, so you get
the drift. Yes, there's a song in my heart and its neither rap nor
opera. Whew.

I don't have scabies, leukemia, baranoidal chancroids, inflammation
of the Pentecostal gland, jihadism, kidney stones, monkey glands, a
hinky hoover, drippy dick, elephantitis of the scrotum, Toho toes,
gyrational weebles, scowly sinuses, tumors de deux, Dobbs syndrome,
iguana eyelids, Surfer's Rot, narcissism of the aorta, impaired
compassion or encysted ovaries. Sometimes the gift of a minus is a
plus. I DO have unspeakable relatives and 2 conditions that are
annoying, one of them a deeply crunchy beaut that makes a few of the
others seem preferable, but hey, no clap, so whaddaya say!

Gimme a break, gimme the skinny, gimme a return on what I've earned,
gimme a chance to show you my true colors when your chips are down,
gimme the benefit of the doubt the way I give it to you, gimme a
chance to make my glitches up to you, gimme a chance to give you a
return on your good turns and good LORD, gimme a break from that
damned jerky kid on the Dell computer commercials. Gimme, gimme,
gimme. Graci.

--

HellPope Huey® hellpopehuey@subgenius.com
Don't make me come over there, because if I do,
I'm Coming Over There REAL HARD.

"The only state-sanctioned sexual activity in Texas
is mouth-to-anus-with-a-chicken."
-Jon Stewart

"Have you ever vomited in the Sizzler buffet?"
- "Win Ben Stein's Money"

Here's one possible culprit:
http://www.biopsychiatry.com/subgenual.html

Back to document index

Original file name: Different Gifts- 'Tis the.txt - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:47