FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK June 13, 2003

I'm almost half tempted to write down a wacky episode that happened to my co-worker this morning, as it was so freaking funny. I swear if I had mounted a camera in this room and taped whatever goes on and what people say here and sold it off to MTV, I would score higher ratings than the Ozporns. However I'm trying to adhere to a strict schedule- and I've been scrambling subjects left and right ever since.

By Monday, I'm hoping that my Deposit Man and the Last Great Gate of Mortality polish of the third act will finally be finished and I'm thinking of giving myself a little breather by plotting a short story featuring a well established DC Comics characters that's been boiling in my head since forever. Well, we'll see what happens.

So yesterday, I was reminiscencing about the ROGER's niece who's name I do now remember- it was DEBBIE.
It was revealed that DEBBIE was suffering from some sleeping disorder. I have never seen a actual sleepwalker before and to this day, I I haven't seen one since, but it looked incredibly eerie. Like as if someone was pulling your strings and directing you to do the will of the person doing the pulling. So when the ROGER finally came home from his drink on the job, my mom told the ROGER about the incident and he refused to believe it. He just assumed that I was the cause of the problem and he came out and woke up from my fake slumber and gave me a stern warning that if he caught me trying to fool around with his 'niece' , he was going to put me in the hospital. I heaved a typical 'whatever' and rolled over in bed. The ROGER wasn't go to lift a finger, because DEBBIE wasn't up to verify the story and didn't see a point in waking her up (not that it stopped him from waking me or my sister up every morning at 3 AM.

One day later in the next week or two, despite the constant ribbing from DEBBIE, I always had a full agenda on my plate- I belonged to a sort of summer camp or recreation program at the Central Junior High School across the street from my house. I had a cozy environment to wander everywhere. I had the Jersey City Reservoir to the left of me, the school's baseball fields to the right, and the apartment complex swimming pool in back of me. I went out that morning to play across the street, my sister and DEBBIE were playing with dolls, games, whatever- they eventually got into a fight and blows were struck.

After summer camp was over, I went straight to the pool and I wasn't getting along with the new lifeguard. Other friends of mine were getting along- but this lifeguard named TOM wasn't clashing with my personality ( and at the age of 13 - is anyone suppose to?). Anyway, DEBBIE came down to the pool on a guest badge just as I got into a shouting match with TOM over something silly- I forgot how the conversation esculated to that point. I said to TOM somewhere along the line, that if I had a gun, I'd take it and shoot your mother- which directly lead to TOM taking me by the scruff of my neck and dragged me to the edge of the 3 or 5 feet end and threw me in clothes and all. I remember I had my first subscription copy of Circus Magazine with Rick Wakeman on the cover in my hands and I submerged I was not a happy camper. I started cursing up a storm and the whole apartment complex heard me. This lifeguard TOM then took me and threw me out the gate and told me my swimming priviledges were revoked. I just stood outside the gate and screamed more profanities to him. What I had forgotten in the malee was that DEBBIE had witnessed the entire incident. So I figured I didn't want to go into the house with soaked clothes, I went back to the baseball field to dry off in the baking sun with my damp waterlogged magazine.

I looked towards home and I saw something bear down on me...

To Be Continued...

~

Coat

FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK June 12, 2003

Please excuse my absence from yesterday. All day yesterday and half of today- I had to take a group psychological evaluation on how well I interact with other co-workers and I also had a meeting this morning to discuss my performance review. Now that my four month probation period is over, I can go ahead and start taking classes to improve or fine tune some skills such as Outlook, or maybe some Power Point, or maybe get into some Photoshop.

The other day I was setting up a memorable skirmish that occurred between the ROGER and I in the summer of 1977, other than a minor infraction sneaking off to hitchhike 10 miles to see Star Wars because the ROGER wouldn't allow me to see it unless I got a haircut- I gave him the standard equivalent of a thirteen year old 'flip the bird' and went and saw it anyway. That didn't bode too well with his discipline track record. But, that incident was mild compared as to when we drove up to New England to bring back the ROGER's niece; who's name I no longer remember- so from here on in, I will only refer her to as the PARASOMNIA BEDWETTER. She came down to spend the summer with us. This wasn't the daughter of the Terrible TERRY, but from some other flipped out sister of the ROGER and she was closer to my age than my half sister was - or maybe it was straight down the middle- anyway, I forget. From the moment she unpacked, she immediately took over my side of the room so that her and my sister could form a bond. For a while they got along famously- almost like if they were sharing some psychic link between two cousins. They went and played everywhere together and the PB was equally, if not more, just as a big of a pain in the ass as my sister was (Her nickname for me was Ski Slope Nose). However, somewhere along the line, the PB started to develop symptoms of a social disorder even as to much as keeping them well hidden from her UNCLE ROGER .

I also remember that was the time when I first started watching the reruns of the first season of Saturday Night Live (I was friends in school with one of the sons of one of the directors on that show- and I think that was how I first became aware of it) and since I got kicked to the curb of the living room couch, I had the run of the big 32 inch cover television/ turntable and eight track stereo system until the ROGER would come home from work at 3 AM in the morning. Then I would have to pretend to be asleep.

So while I was laughing my ass off the Saturday Night Live skits- the PB appeared out of the dark, looked me over, and walked over to the kitchen. Trying to be a nice accommodating step-cousin, I offered to pour her a drink of water- but oddly enough when I asked her what she wanted, she wouldn't answer me- she just stood like a statue with a blank stare. Then I snapped my finger in front of her face, and in all of a sudden she cocked her head in a Linda Blair sort of way and bellowed at me, WHY DON"T YOU SHUT UP ?? at the top of her lungs before turning around to walk back.

Well, that was strange.

I didn't give it any further thought when I sat back to resume watching my program. Then, minutes later, I heard a succession of high pitched screams eminating from my room. I had positively thought my sister and her had got into a big knockabout brawl at one in the morning- but-

When I came bursting into the door what did I find?

I found the PB jumping up and down on my bed like a raving lunatic with the feathers of my goosedown pillow flying everywhere while screaming at the top of her lungs. My sister had just woken up and began freaking out, trying to hold in both her frightened sobs as she remained huddled in the corner of her bed witnessing her cousin being strangely possessed. I thought back to the Terrible TERRY and her inadmissible wire tap and realized then, that maybe my captured half crocked answers about SATAN wasn't too far off the mark- only I meant every word of it as pertaining to the ROGER's family.

My mother had gotten out of bed and found someway to quell the situation. She told me to vamoose or to get out of the way while she tore off my sheets and discarded them into the hamper. I asked my mom what the hell was going on her? My mom simply informed me that she pissed all over them. But why did she yell at me in the kitchen and jump up and down my mattress like a some stupid idiot? My mother expounded my curiosity and said that she was sleepwalking and whatever PB said to you out in the kitchen was only what she was talking to you in a dream'.

Tomorrow I'll continue on with a conflict that arose between a pool lifeguard, the PB, and me that had the ROGER go all out berserk on me.

My fifteen minutes has been up for quite some time,
!
~

Coat

FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK- THE SPECIAL EDITION June 10, 2003

I got time to lay down another track down on memory lane. This is one is about the time I outsmarted the ROGER when I was in the seventh or eighth grade. I guess they call that middle school or junior high school.

The first part I'm going to have to do a little set up- because this is a very messy complicated story to tell.

During the summer months of school vacation- the entire disenfranchised unit that commonly referred itself as 'a well functioning family' would take around two, or sometimes three trips up to New England, especially Rhode Island, although sometimes we would go to Boston. Most the ROGER 's demented clan hailed from New England and believe me, they were just as monstrous and loopy as he was. Most particular was his sister, the Terrible TERRY. I discovered later on, that the woman had been in and out of mental hospitals most of her life. I didn't have the capacity to comprehend the theory of mental illness when I was in my grade school years- so I always wondered why she did the things she did. I distinctively remember one time when she came down to New Jersey for a visit, she got picked up at a Greyhound station by her brother, THE ROGER and within hours of her arriving at the apartment, she began to harp endlessly about how her little brother didn't know the real truth about her being adopted. Well, the ROGER really felt that she was off her rocker and they started arguing into the wee hours of the morning. It all turned ugly when they started shouting and then it ended with her running out the door without a stitch of clothing on. She ran screaming out of the apartment complex naked and was later found in two towns over when she was picked up by the local cops for indecent exposure and BAM, it was back into the nut house.

There was another incident when I was left alone with her when we were out visiting her in Providence, R.I. which basically meant that THE ROGER and my mother went out with some other members of my family for a dinner engagement and since the TERRY didn't want to go, she reluctantly stayed behind to babysit my sister and I. The TERRY thought it would be fun to have a little psychological profile at my expense by planting a tape recorder as she asked me a whole bunch of crap about how I felt about the subject of Jesus Christ and Satan. When The ROGER and my mom came back they were distressed to discover that the TERRY had not given us dinner (I wasn't really that hungry anyway, I had a bunch of BLACK PANTHER/JUNGLE ACTION comics to keep me occupied), and on a spur of the moment, the Terrible TERRY whipped out the tape recorder and played our 'interview' for a joke. Needlessly, the ROGER was not amused by my answers but chided his sister for secretly taping me anyway. I'll finish up this little tidbit tomorrow. The actual focus on this narrative is on the ROGER's niece and how she got me in a shitload of trouble back in the summer of ''77.

My fifteen minutes are up.

~

Coat

FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAK June 10, 2003

In the third and final act of my grade school chronicle of my evil step father mishap, my stepfather clobbered my mother who was in total disagreement about our ex-pet being given over to some people by my aunt. Out of sheer arrogance, he waylaid her for suggesting to let the matter go. Like I said before last weekend, I saw my mom's head and neck go smack against the doorway and either she was out cold or whimpering like a whipped dog. The ROGER saw that I witnessed the incident and I would hate to think what he would have had in store for me if it wasn't.....for a neighbor's sudden pounding on the door. The ROGER asked me to help lift her off the floor and bring her to their bedroom, he then went and spoke to whoever it was who knocked on the door.

After the neighbor had gone, The ROGER came back into the bedroom and told me to get her some aspirin. A couple more words were exchanged between them and then he went and left for work telling me and my sister to keep a eye on her.

There was really nothing I could do to help- both my sister and I didn't know much about dialing 911 as stuff like that wasn't empathesized to small children back in those days of the mid-seventies. However, I assumed my aunt placed a call, because no sooner than my sister and I went to bed, the apartment was later occuppied by a couple of police officers and my grandfather was there to talk to my mother. I don't know the specfics of what was talked about but I think my grandfather had a stern talk with his mangled minded son-in-law. Somehow, unfortunely they worked it out amidt talks of divorce, and I was still under the scrutiny of this drunk who liked to believe that I was under his flesh and blood.

Coming up next is my favorite high school era punch-em-up with the ROGER.

~

Coat
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FIFTEEN MINUTE BREAKJune 9, 2003

Technically I only got eight minutes- so my cliffhanger is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

Last weekend was a mix bag of accomplishments and mishaps.

i got all my comic books in storage alphabetized and counted. Close to 5000. Which really isn't worth forking over sixty five bucks every month to keep it locked away. This summer I'm probably going to move all my books including the ones I have at the house into a storage locker not far from my house.

Spent all day yesterday at the Shrine Auditorium seeing ARNOLD and everybody was going off their fucking rockers. Felt guilty afterwards. Spent too much money which would be better spent at San Diego. My big purchase of the day was a bootleg DVD-R of the entire season of the 1966 Iron Man animated series.

~

Coat