A Rant with Bat 2 22 2021

prose reading 2 19 2019

prose reading: Pandemic Chic 2 19 2021

The Not Too Social Hour with Bat Robbins 2 18 2021

prose reading: Me And Rosy 2 (fragment) 2 17 2021

prose reading: Me and Rosy (fragment) 2 17 2021

Cinematic Sleep

Bad dreams are great! In the last one, there was an alpha-male bully who looked a lot like the young Ted Nugent. Great hair, great bones on that bastard. I was riding my bicycle on a circular riding track, twenty feet in diameter, in a store front across from the PNC building downtown. 'Ted' got on the track on his super Harley, broadsided me on my bicycle, causing the handle bars on both vehicles to lock together. He then forced me to circle the track at high speed, yours truly unable to dislodge from the coupling. All the while, 'Ted' was smiling, brutally, inches from my face, and he seemed much too powerful to punch out, though I considered trying. It's such a drag when you do so, and it doesn't work. Add that one can't control a two wheel vehicle and brawl at the same time.

I managed to get off my bike and get away, to the Northside Park area. It was rimmed with crowds of mean looking, gnome-like people who exuded hate and misery. Realizing my bicycle was still down town, I got back where I was, downtown, faster than humanly possible, and began looking for it. Across the street, 'Ted' was pulling up on his power bike. He parked it, got off, and engaged a bystander in a fight, kicking his victim in the face, decking him. But he left me alone, and as I searched the mini-track outer flooring, there were bicycles that looked like mine, but weren't. There was a seedy old man at a desk to one side of the bike track, looked like the character 'Ollie' in the film Repo Man. I demanded he compensate me for my lost bicycle. Other people were there, also demanding he pay for their lost bicycles. He uttered a load of BS, and offered me nine bucks. Other people were demanding hundreds of dollars, and were getting the same BS from 'Ollie.'

Waking, I crossed the house to get to the coffee, and saw my bicycle parked in the kitchen, per weird normal for me. It took minutes to fully realize there's no twenty foot circular bicycle track across from PfuckingNC. There had been no 'Ted.' Sigmund Freud might have agreed that the subconscious mind is like a Waring blender, turning that which was real into a recondite reality frappe. I got picked on a lot when I was kid, and it didn't change all that much as an adult.

essay: Mein Itch

 

There are those among us who want to know how my 'roid flare-up is going. Others may be indifferent to it, mayhaps callous, and then there is the more articulated reaction of disgust and boredom. "Why is this man telling us about his asshole?' people may be asking. "Doesn't this bastard have something better to talk about?" is another question I'm not shy about.

I took psychology classes. There is a list of anti-social traits, they all fit on the back of a post card, and talking at length about either boring or repugnant subject matter is one of the lesser known of traits. I've worked in a dozen different telemarketing businesses, and every phone room I was in had text book deviant assholes there, many were top earners. One such had deliberately annoying behaviors like slamming the receiver down on his push button phone. He'd been asked repeatedly not to do it, and kept doing it. He was a top earner, and could get away with annoying people phoning nearest this creep. His forte was the shaggy dog story.

He'd tell us all, in gross detail, how he was going to cook a chicken fillet. Painfully boring content, he would effect annoying mannerisms while doing his act.

Then there was the creep who lived next door. He would talk at length about clipping coupons and buying canned goods. This guy also talked at length about his bowel habits. The guy was, among other things, a stalker.

I'm a nice guy with a 'roid flare-up. There are people who think anything butthole is funny, and I am in partial agreement, with reasonably normal reservations. It is possible to make the whole fetid affair entertaining, and I adore an open possibility. I call it the 'rictus of hope.' It might be fun to read about my ass. It may be disgusting. In any case, it is true. It is in the reader's heart and mind to be 'roid or anti-'roid. I care far too much about my reader's ass to neglect a proper explanation of why I talk so much about my asshole. Thanks for reading!

poem reading: Convalescing 2 4 2021