Du verspielst deine Zeit!

If Lenny Bruce was right that comedy is remembered pain, then you lucky readers are in for some 24-karat comic gold. Every move I make brings a flash of agony and the vivid recollection of my wanton destruction of my own lower back this morning in the gym, caused by putting away some dumbbells that I was finished with. (Lesson: Never clean up after yourself.)

To make things worse, my resulting stooped-over gait resulted in my blindly smashing my head into a low-hanging shelf when carefully placing a cup of coffee on my desk, thus damaging my brainpan (and spilling the coffee). So I now not only have the posture of an australopithecine, but the intelligence too.

Fortunately, due to the brain damage, I now finally see eye-to-eye with the camp that holds that monkeys are inherently funny, which therefore makes me, a neo-protohuman, hilarious. All of this proves Bruce right. Or something. I really have no idea what I'm talking about.

Best, then, to get on with the new piece of mail for Miss Ruddy Ruddy. It's first class mail, and from a mysterious address in Scarborough. Can you guess who it's from? Even with my diminished capacity, I can.

Yep, it's from Enchantress Hosiery of Canada. I thought it was that time again. Just like many of the customers who wear their wares, it seems that this company gets unaccountably bitchy and unreasonable with me once a month.

What have they to say this time? Well, for starters, they still insist that Ruddy Ruddy owes them $24.64, which, I need not remind you, is untrue. But attached to the invoice is the following letter, printed in a bold, black Impact font:

RECOMMENDED ACTION--SEND TO COLLECTION AGENCY

Acct. # 004295469-9

Dear Miss Ruddy,

Your Delinquent Account has been forwarded to this Office with a recommendation that I assign your account to an external collection agency.

If you wish to avoid the involvement of third-party collection specialists, please pay your overdue account of $24.64 IMMEDIATELY.

Pay by cheque, or pay by credit card using the above payment stub, and send the enclosed envelope. Or pay online at www.enchantresshosiery.com.

Viktor Kreiger
Collections Officer

Well, it seems that P. Caponio has indeed washed his hands of the fruitless Ruddy Ruddy case. And we've gone from having a Italian-named (read: possible kneebreaking mafioso) figurehead for the collection department back to a sinister-sounding German name (read: possible jackbooted thug). I suppose having a German author would explain why some of the nouns (such as "Delinquent Account" and "Office") are capitalized for no reason.

Of course we've seen this before. I wonder if Dr. Viktor Von Doom here ever meets with Mr. Breithaupt from Collectcorp to reminisce about the old days of evildoing and good times before they were forced to flee to Canada to escape prosecution for their crimes against humanity. I picture Sir Ian McKellen from Apt Pupil sharing a snifter of brandy with Sir Laurence Olivier's evil dentist from Marathon Man.

I'd say Kreiger one-ups Breithaupt in the intimidating surname department in that the former's name translates to "warrior" or "argumentative person", while the latter's translates to "broadhead". On the other hand, Breithaupt and I aren't on a first-name basis, as far as he's concerned. That's Mister Breithaupt to you. That's kind of intimidating too. These guys are scary! Could you imagine if they ever tracked down Miss Ruddy Ruddy?

Viktor Kreiger: [threatingly] We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine.

Ruddy Ruddy: [recoils in mock horror] Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I'm so scared! Oooh, the Germans! [hiding] Uh oh, the Germans are going to get me!

Viktor Kreiger: Stop it!

Mr. Breithaupt: Stop, fraulein.

Ruddy Ruddy: Don't let the Germans come after me. Oh no, the Germans are coming after me.

Mr. Breithaupt: Please stop the "pretending you are scared" game, please.

Viktor Kreiger: Stop it! Stop it!

Ruddy Ruddy: [brief pause, then resumes] No! They're so big and strong!

Mr. Breithaupt: Stop it.

Viktor Kreiger: Stop it, Ruddy Ruddy.

Mr. Breithaupt: Please stop pretending you are scared of us, please, now.

Ruddy Ruddy: Oh, protect me from the Germans! The Germans...

Viktor Kreiger: Ruddy Ruddy, STOP IT!

More chicken scratching

I've been meaning to post on this one since August, when I dropped a little hint about it. But it seems that I piqued absolutely no one's curiosity, and then other things came up, and I kind of forgot about it for a while. Anyway, the Chicken Farmers of Ontario sent Mrs. Ruddy Ruddy another issue of Wing magazine.

Now, the last issue of this purportedly semiannual (or biannual, if you prefer) publication was supposedly #2. So how is it that this one says on the cover that it's "Number 12 in a Series" even though the accompanying letter says it's indeed #3? Perhaps the fowl afficionados behind this publication have taken that old adage about not counting your chickens to a whole new level, and are simply making wild-ass guesses whenever it's time to come up with any numbers.

The letter urged me to check out the Ontario Chicken Lover website, as they've added several "new" areas. (The quotation marks are theirs. Maybe they're ironic, and these areas aren't really new.) So I checked it out, and was surprised to see that there's a members-only section. Not just anybody is allowed to love a chicken, it seems.

(As a side note, if you Google "chicken lover", you'll find a site called "Confessions of a Chicken Lover". Judging by this picture of Zoe, the girl who runs it, a chicken could really do much worse. The chicken-loving scene from Pink Flamingos comes to mind, for instance.)

Fortunately, when I checked the letter again, it turned out I already have a password to the members-only section. And although I'm probably not supposed to divulge this information to the general public, I'm sure it's okay if I share my password with my Ruddy Buddies. It's wing. Imagine the odds that I, of all the people who got a copy of Wing magazine, would get that particular easy-to-remember password!

The reverse of the letter featured a survey that I could have filled out to enter a contest, but I'm not bothering with that, as the only thing featured in the members area is a list of the contest winners. So there's nothing in it for me now. But I'm heartbroken because I could have had a George Foreman Countertop Rotisserie that would allow me to "roast up to 2 chickens at once". I wonder, though: Is that the best way of phrasing it? At any given time, you can use this machine to roast zero, one, or two chickens. However, you cannot roast zero chickens at once (i.e., simultaneously), nor can you roast one chicken at once. So there's no need to establish an upward boundary of the number of chickens you can roast at once if the only possible number is two. You could just as accurately say that you can roast as few as two chickens at once.

Anyway, all the quibbling about the writing aside, I do like the picture accompanying the recipe for "Dancing Beer Can Chicken" inside the magazine. I'll be damned if that thing doesn't look like it's dancing! Of course, if someone shoved something with the girth of a beer can up my rear end and made me stand on a hot grill, I'd be dancing too.

My name is Ruddy, and I am an alcoholic

Ruddy Ruddy has a problem.

Welcome to a Very Special Episode of Ruddy Ruddy. The Ruddy Ruddy After-School Special. The TV Movie of the Week, starring Meredith Baxter-Birney as Ruddy Ruddy, in her most powerful dramatic role ever.

Yes, Ruddy Ruddy has a problem. So says Alcoholics Anonymous, who have staged an intervention by mail to free Ruddy Ruddy from the grip of the demon rum. Enclosed in a thick envelope marked "PERIODICAL" is a copy of their magazine, the AA Grapevine.

Could this have something to do with that blog update I did recently while I was drunk?

The letter enclosed with the magazine says that they're sending it in response to my recent website request. Funny -- I don't remember making any such website request. Then again, perhaps I did, but was too drunk to remember.

On the other hand, perhaps it's not meant for me. The letter mentions that gift subscriptions are available for sponsees, friends, or loved ones. (But not an unsponsored and unloved family member, apparently, as he or she wouldn't fit any of these cateories.) I suspect I know who this gift subscription might be for: my housemate Shanel, who drunkenly blundered into my room while my Ruddy Buddy Elizabeth and I were perusing this issue of AA Grapevine, grabbed our shoes, and flung them out my front door into the night. (Then again, perhaps this is simply what I deserve for answering Shanel's question "Who's that in your room with you?" with "a Filipino lady-boy prostitute" -- a barefoot trip out to the lawn with flashlight in hand.)

Anyway, I'm ashamed to admit it, but it took me a full day after this to work out why they called the magazine AA Grapevine. See, a "grapevine" is an informal means of circulating information, and also, grapes are used to make wine, which alcoholics like to drink. I may or may not be a drunk, but my moments of clarity don't come as fast or as often as they used to.

AA Grapevine is subtitled "Our Meeting in Print" and the Statement of Purpose inside declares that the magazine is intended to function as exactly that. If this is true, a flip through the magazine indicates that a significant portion of every AA meeting is dedicated to cataloguing other publications available from the publishers of AA Grapevine. Of course, the special focus of this particular issue is to focus on AA literature. "Literature" is their word, not mine. While many of the giants of Western literature might have been raging drunks, it's obvious that none of them wrote for AA Grapevine, wherein the prose is workmanlike at best. And the rest of the AA canon is apparently no better; one writer in the magazine writes of having her sensibilities initially offended by the "poor syntax and the simplistic writing" of the Big Book, (aka Alcoholics Anonymous, which is the bible of AA, if you don't count the actual Gideon Bible, which they're also very keen on).

I don't know what to make of the whole religion angle, actually. Right there on page one of the magazine, in the AA preamble, they write, "The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. Yet, fully six of the Twelve Steps printed right beside this on the inside front cover make some kind of reference to God. So apparently there's at least one additional requirement for membership: a belief in some sort of higher power. It doesn't have to be the Christian god, mind you. One writer in the magazine gives thanks to the Great Spirit, while another rails against the too-common recital of the Lord's Prayer in meetings, pointing out that there are also Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and Shintoist members of AA. But it seems that belief in a higher power is pretty much required if you want to be in AA. Atheists need not apply. In fact, atheists are probably much better off swilling absinthe like a bunch of French existentialists while they contemplate their terrifying freedom of choice in a meaningless universe without God.

However, it's apparently not actually necessary to be an alcoholic to join AA, as evidenced by an article by Leonard Blumenthal, a Class A (nonalcoholic) trustee of the organization. I'm wondering, though, why a nonalcoholic trustee would be described as "Class A", of all things. I mean, one A in "AA" stands for "alcoholics" and the other one stands for "anonymous". Take your pick of which A applies to what, but old Leonard Blumenthal sure ain't too anonymous, writing his first and last name down like that. I'm not saying he's in denial -- I'm just saying he might want to look into the first of those Twelve Steps, the one where he admits he has a problem.

You might be offended that I appear to be making light of a serious illness. "Alcoholism isn't funny!" you might be protesting. And if you're saying this, you are dead wrong. According to Alcoholics Anonymous, it is funny, and to prove this, they've included a humour section in their periodical. It's titled "Ham on Wry". Will it be wry humour? Or will they ham it up? Well, let's look at a sample joke and see for ourselves:

Q: What did the sponsor say to the sponsee after he told his story to the group the first time?
A: Your I's are too close together.

Hmm. Maybe you were right after all. Alcoholism isn't funny. I don't even get that joke, in fact. Maybe you had to have been there for that one. Or maybe it's funnier if you're drunk. Well, let's try another one:

Q: What do you call an alcoholic ghost?
A: A boo-zer.

Oh my lord. That's a riddle for kids. Alcoholic kids. The only people who this kind of lame pun could possibly appeal to are eight-year-old children in the grip of a horrible, wasting addiction. That's not funny. It's heartbreaking.

No, alcoholism just isn't funny. On the other hand, there's a story in the magazine about a boozehound named Larry, whom the author describes as "a repository for every dirty limerick and song that had been written since Roman times". His exploits ranged from attempting to arrange the elaborate, gangland-style killing of a mouse in his kitchen to inserting a trombone mouthpiece into a double-barrelled shotbun and putting on an impromptu concert in the middle of a hardware store. So he sounds like a pretty funny guy. However, the author implies that Larry died of drink at the end of the story, so he's apparently also a cautionary tale. However, the actual causes of death remain a mystery, so it's really just the author's conjecture. In fact, Larry's ex-wife says that he died happy -- he'd just fulfilled a lifelong dream by buying his own bar -- so I'm really not sure what kind of cautionary tale this is. Don't follow your dreams, I guess.

So maybe it's just that the dry drunks at AA Grapevine aren't funny. Take the wacky picture of the month, which shows a street sign marked "Drinker St." Mildly amusing, I guess, until they write, "'Drinker Street?' Sounds like a good address for many of our readers!" As though anyone reading AA Grapevine needs it to be explained to him that he's a heavy drinker. Way to belabor the obvious. Haw! Geddit? "Drinker"!

Disgusted, I flip to the end of the magazine, where I see a subscription form. "Do you want what we have?" it says. "Then do what we do: Subscribe to the AA Grapevine!"

Do you want what we have? What, alcoholism? Thanks, but I'll pass. I wasn't too inclined to subscribe to AA Grapevine by now -- too much higher power, not enough humour power -- but the prospect of developing a destructive addiction just by regularly receiving this periodical makes it even less likely that I will.

As it turns out, Ruddy Ruddy does have a problem, but it's not with drink. It's just with magazines for drunks.