Fellow Go Figure Reads writer, Stanley McFarland is working on a
project about hell. He writes on a blog a few times a year, and it’s
usually something long, churchy, and egg-heady. It’s pretty boring
stuff, but feel free to check it out. boring blog
Anyway, Stanley says he’s reworking the concept of hell, and he
asked me what I think of it. I wanted to say that hell was reading
long, churchy, egg-heady blog posts about stuff I don’t understand,
but seeing as he writes for Go Figure Reads, I decided I should be
more helpful.
So here are the top ten ways that I see hell.
1) An eternal presidential campaign.
1a) A campaign where the two major candidates are the worst people I
can think of. Wait! Are we in hell already?
2) Gnats.
3) Endless root canal session with about 50 trillion requests of,
“just a little wider, please,” from my polite demonic dentist.
4) Celine Dion tribute on steel guitars.
5) Being next in line at the Department of Motor Vehicles while the
person at the window refuses to leave until he can vent his complaint
one more time…
6a) I pay to go to France with friends and find I’m the only one in
my group that doesn’t speak French…
6b) And doesn’t understand art…
6c) And doesn’t like wine…
6d) And is allergic to stinky cheese.
7) All Award Shows, All the Time!
8) Lima bean Pop Tarts.
9a) To have that dream again where I’m back in school and I’m not
wearing pants
9b) And find out it’s not a dream.
10) Any given day in Caitlyn Jenner’s life.
Then again, some animated characters don't seem to mind hell.
Here’s another
story I can’t seem to finish. Maybe that’s all there is.
Aunt Kate
by Headley Hauser
I've always adored
my Aunt Kate. She was my Mom’s youngest sibling – the youngest
are usually the most fun. When Mom told me that she couldn’t drive
me down to Stephenson College, I asked her if Aunt Kate could.
Mom hesitated and I
pretended that I didn’t know why.
Stephenson was a
Christian school – my parents insisted. Both my folks and the
school were stuck in the nineteen-fifties – or maybe it was the
eighteen-fifties – I’ve never been that good in history.
Aunt Kate drove us
up to the brick arch at the entrance and two upperclassmen girls
stopped us. They motioned for us to roll down the window.
“Are you a new
student?” asked the blonde.
“Yes,” I
answered tentatively.
“Welcome to
Stephenson freshman orientation week!” she bubbled. She handed me
a packet of papers with a map of the school on top. It wasn’t a
very complicated map – Stephenson had less than a thousand
students.
“May I get your
name?” asked the blonde.
“Charles Manson,”
I responded. The blond looked at her three page print-out and
frowned.
“Brenda,” she
asked the brunette, “do you have a C. Manson on your print-out?”
“No,” said the
brunette who may, or may not have been named Brenda. She didn’t
elaborate.
“That’s my
nickname,” I said. “My legal name is Dylan Fogler.”
The blonde jumped
happily. “Yes, I have you here, Dylan – or Charles. You’re in
Shepherd house, third floor.” She pointed to a small rectangle on
my map labeled, Shepherd House. “Dinner is in Serenity.” she
pointed to another rectangle. “You’ll meet your orientation
leaders there. Your mother is welcome to eat with us tonight.”
“Thank you,”
said Aunt Kate, jumping in her seat in an excellent imitation of the
blonde who still had not given us her name.
“Brenda,” said
the blonde, holding out her hand. Brenda placed into the blonde’s
hand a garish short-billed baseball cap, orange, blue, purple, and
yellow, with the pink letters, SC sewn on the front.
“Here is your
dink,” said the blonde.
“My what?”
“Your dink.”
“No,” said Aunt
Kate, “I haven’t seen it since he was potty-trained, but I’m
pretty certain that’s not his dink.”
The brunette
smirked. The blonde looked puzzled.
“Where I come
from,” I explained, “a dink is a part of the male anatomy.”
“And not part of
the female,” Aunt Kate elaborated.
I handed the hat
back to the blonde. “I’ll pass.”
“Oh, no – you
can’t!” exclaimed the blonde. “All the freshmen wear them for
the first week.”
“All the female
freshmen must wear a dink their first week?” my Aunt asked.
“Yes,” said the
blonde.
“Kinky school.”
“No!” said the
blonde, blushing. “I mean this kind of dink – not… the other
kind.”
“I think,” said
Aunt Kate, “You should let Charlie Manson be exempt from wearing a
second dink. You wouldn’t want an incident.”
“What?”
sputtered the blonde.
“Mom,” I said to
Aunt Kate. “You know I promised not to do anything like that
here.”
“But last time you
weren’t provoked nearly so badly – funny hats?”
“I was never
convicted!”
“That’s true,
Dear. Your Uncle Carl is an excellent attorney. And of course all
the witnesses were unable to testify.”
I turned to the
blonde and watched as a fly flew into her open mouth. “I’ll pass
on the second dink.”
“It’s for the
best, blonde co-ed without a name,” said Aunt Kate. “His Uncle
Carl is in the Bahamas right now avoiding extradition.”
Shepherd House might
just as well be called Generic House. The walls were beige cinder block, and all the furniture was made of the same bland wood
you see in every dormitory. Except for the lack of crushed beer cans
and the complementary bible with the cheery note, “Don’t forget
your sword!” I might have been at State.
“Have a blessed
year,” said the head resident as he poked his head in each room.
“Cheer up,” said
Aunt Kate, reading my mood. “Maybe you can get time off for bad
behavior.”
Here's a vid of our favorite left-handed, evangelical, animated character.
