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"DID YOU TELL THEM KIDS IN THET GRADUATION SPEECH WHY YOU DID SO POORLY IN COLLEGE, BOY? ABOUT HOW YOU WUZ SO DUMB YOU TOOK NOTES WITH A BLACK HIGHLIGHTER PEN?"
--Granfather, making cruel fun of me out of jeolousy

June 97 Update

Page 4 of 4

I wrote about how i am doing freelance work in the form of Advice to the Lovelourn by ghostwriting for this company. I like this extra job becuase they proofread for me. Well they called to say they had a problem with the transmission of some of my files. I zipped them up wrong. Its now the 3rd time this hapenned and because they coudnt use the files i cant get payed for this week.

Also im not an expert

They got rid of theire medicol writer and now I have to do THAT part of the research. They have this idiot on staff who I have to run the qeustions through and then edit his responces and he is very haughtey and condescending to me when I call him. Letme tell you--half the people who write in for advice to the lovelourn are also writing in for speceil Womens Problems and I DO NOT know about cramps and the diference between a good dischardge and bad one.

Later Granfather got the even more evil idea to force me to clean ALL the venetion blinds in our trailor. This is to punish me for not lettin him go in the chicken coop to get those tapes he needs. He knows they are PBS tapes from 1992 or 1993 but theres a mountain of crap over them and if he doesnt burrow in correctly he coud be crushed to death or else trapped and eaten alive by bees. My punishmant was to clean the venetion blinds (there are 7 of them) and the olny way you can realy do it right is take them all off and use Q-tips and the Water Pik becuase the pulsating action gets in all the nooks and crannies and then hang them up to dry. You know how hard it is. He put his ugly disgisting face close to mine and started screamin. Granfathers ugly skinny body looks like if you took a skeleton and streched yellow balloon rubber over it, like from a popped baloon. All over his face this time of year are blotchy mildewey lookin black patches that look like big liver spots and feel like slippery seaweed. He even has them on his eyeballs. Granfather also has adult onset acne but unlike any type you ever saw. These things pulsaite I swear it. He held up this big locust from outside right in my face. "THERE AINT NO BEES OUT IN THET BARN, JUST THESE HERE AN' THEY DONT BITE."

A locust is like a giant grashoppor at least 4 inches long. Ive NEVER seen anythin like these in California and they actually move there heads around to look at you. It is so danm scary. He knows Im afriad of them and other giant bugs. He threw it across the room and it was hopping and twitching everywhere till I got it outside. Granfather went to bed WITHUOT supper but instead drank half of one of those boxes of whitewine with a bottle of seltzer on an emptey stomeach. He was belching like crazy from the carbonnation. I had to open the window. He was doin it on purpose. I said Granfather, when you burp it stinks like rancid boloney, and he said, THEN I GUESS YOU SHOUD GIVE ME AN 'OSCOR' MYER BRIGGS.

The next morning Somthings WRONG

I awoke to a eerie calm in the trailor. A few of the dogs were outside whimporing; Baldy, Kathi-Lee and Drive-By were howling and they NEVER howl. Granfather was NOT in his bed. I ran outside and right infront of the trailer Granfather is just laying there with his head in a bucket of joint compound. Some men when they are in good shape have a washboard stomach. Well granfather has a washbaord neck and he was allthe way up to his neck in the cemennt. His cardboard animal coller was torn off and on the dirt. I was sure he was dead.

Well beffore I called the US Govorment Men In Black to have him taken away to Area 51 in a secret railroad car inside a white plastic pail filled with amber liquid and labeled "Purity Control", I looked a little closer.

The old bastord has rudementary breathing gills on his neck but they were clogged with snot, but I finaly saw vapor and wet nasty stuff blowin out of the lung tube.

then he started moving

Granfathers boney hand reached out to my shirt an pulled me close. Then with his crooked skeletol finger he pointed to the toolshed and then wrote in the dust beloew him:

S E A R S P O W E R D R I L L

So I got the drill and the extension cord and made a few holes along the egde and got the thing off his head and then hosed him off. I was so pissed at him I cant tell you. And he kept sayin to me that this PROVES he can go in and search for the colectibles: Alls he will do is breathe thruogh the breathing tube in his lung and atach a 100 foot gardon hose to it. He has an old suit of armour that he will wear to keep him from bein crushed. It is not authenttic--the suit of armor is from the 1950s so if it gets dented if a large couch falls on him its not so bad plus hell be protected.

The man is demented

I finally begged him (using the gentle but firm threat of the vacuume cleanor as levverage) into letting ME to risk my life get at least a few bags out of the barn for his perrusal from the '92-'93 season of PBS. I knew where a few of these bags were. He agreed to let me do it. Needless to say i was almost killed and it took me 2 hours but i did get a bag of tapes out for him. I also got a nice couple of bee stings on my legs including one on my nuts you DONT want to know about.

Our TV gets busted

None of the tapes have labels on them. He was looking for a bunch of PBS "Nature" tapes but instead had to just watch about 50 hours of PBS till he got to the right ones. Granfather disctinctly remembers some Nature shows that especialy showed the savagery of the animal kingdom, but in order to get to them, he had to watch all the unlabeled tapes, including Sesame Street, McNeil-Lerhor, (Now called simply the Lerher Show), Luois Rukoyser...and the Frugol Gourmet

Now, I LIKE the Frugal Gourmet, but somthing about him annoys Granfather. I woudnt say hes anoyyed as much as he is by The Frugol Gourmat as he is by Mark Russel, but its close.

Granfather was screamin so loud I heard him while i was in the shower. I ran out to see Granfather red with rage, the whole wheelchair shaking and him screaming and caterwauling at the TV while the kindley bearded and bespectacoled cook from Seattle was preparing a recipe. I was suprized because the recipe looked like somthing Granfather woud of liked, (or atleast would of tryed to suck up in his lung tube). I think all it was, was milk, sour cream, regulor cream and sugar in a bowl with a pool of melted buttor floating on top. Granfather kept screamin: THET THERE T'AINT NOTHIN BUT CURDS AND WHEY.

The Frugol Gourmet kept wistfully sayin that this was a warm memory of his that they eat in Norway when there freezin there asses off arround Christmas time and that when he was about 8 years old his grandmothor used to make for him.

Well atleast he has NICE memories about a grandparent. Then allof a sudden the Frugol Gourmet, (who kept interupting himself to talk about the memoreis of this stuff) atcually starts crying. And it was THEN that Granfather absoulutey lost it.

Do you remember the scene in the Godfathor in the very begining when Marlin Brando screams at Jonny Fontaine "BE A MAN" when he starts cryin about not gettin the part in the movie, and then the Godfather starts fake-cryin to mock him? Well thats what hapenned. Granfather started SCREAMIN at the TV sayin about how some people cry over spilt milk, "AN THIS HERE MILK AINT EVON SPILT YET," and over and over callin the Frugal Guormet these cruel names like a "White wine drinker" and also a "Liberal repubican" and other mean things; (As Granfather is a moderate to consorvative Democrat, this is a big insult from him). And then the next thing you know Granfather springs up from the wheelchair, gets into his walker, waddles over to the closet, gets the shotgun and destroys our Television set.

"IT AINT NOTHIN' PERSONOL ABOUT THE FRUOGOL GOURMAY," said granfather after he had a chance to calm down, "ITS THE SYSTEM. THE SYSTEM I TELLS YUH, WHICH BREEDS THIS SORT AN' CALLS IT 'EDDYCATIONOL TV'. I'D BEN A WANTIN' TO DO THAT TO THE TV SET FER NIGH 30 YEARS."

tHE End of this update

I will discuss more about what hapenned including an emergencey 911 call to our Trailer later that evening in the next update. Also, that night was the beginning of the showdown with my dad and stepmom when we talked over the speakerphone while they were in California about that vacation to Branson I am suposed to be taking Granfather and his disgusting waffly smelly girlfreind on at the end of July: I already said I AM NOT GOING TO DO IT.