A Special Post for Darryl Worrely

Yes, Mr. Worrely, I have forgotten.

Wack Wacky Wicca Chick

Posted today in lieu of something that I have written myself is something I found, the lyrics to a song called Wacky Wacky Wicca Chick. I found these at the Zounds Youth Rock Ministry.
Zounds YRM is, in their words, "a Ministry aimed at teens and young adults that uses the rocking power of awesome music to reach out and bring the Word to those that feel traditional church services too boring or uncool. We offer Totally Radical Salvation for today's totally radical kids!"
Wacky Wacky Wicca Chick is from Zounds YRM's second album, No Sympathy for the Devil.

*********

In the suburbs of our town, there is a girl with a frown.
For her, Christ has no renown. Just a dude in a thorned crown.

Wacky, wacky Wicca chick.
Wacky! Wacky!
Her spells and charms are a trick.
Wacky, Wacky, Wacky!
Dabbles with the Satanic:
Tarot, ouija, and magick.
Wacky! Wacky! Wicca!

Mother Earth, Ishtar, Baal: yes, she claims to know them all.
Goes to a skyclad cabal, spends the Sabbat at the mall.

Wacky, wacky Wicca chick.
Wacky! Wacky!
Weirder than a Catholic.
Wacky, Wacky, Wacky!
Her "Blessed Be"'s just a shtick.
Her other car's a broomstick.
Wacky! Wacky! Wicca!

(Bass solo)

Her religion is a mess. She worships some strange Goddess.
But the Lord don't wear a dress. Now her soul is in distress.

Wacky, wacky Wicca chick.
Wacky! Wacky!
Ambiguously sapphic.
Wacky, Wacky, Wacky!
Heaven or Hell, gotta' pick.
Christ'll be back... Quick! Quick! Quick!
Wacky! Wacky! Wicca!

Wacky! Wacky! Wicca!
Wacky!
Wacky!
Wacky!
Wacky!

Barnes and Noble Hates Imagination and Fun/I Slack Off at Work

This is a reproduction of a story that I originally wrote about a year ago while I was on the clock at Barnes and Noble. I was sent to the music department for an hour while my co-worker Angela took her dinner break. The music department is, generally speaking, the most boring place in the store to work, and kind of secluded. Nobody looks in on you; without any customers you are alone.
So I am in the music department at 7:30 on a Friday night, the last hour of my shift, and the department is totally empty. And I am looking around for stuff to do, some CD’s to shelve or something, and I come upon Angela’s poetry she has been writing. And it’s really bad poetry, stuff about the darkness of her innermost self, and how when the birds sing it’s a form of prayer, and how her heart aches for a man’s touch, and so on. But it gives me the idea that I could pass some time by writing a brief story. And so I do.
I show the story to Angela, and she likes it a lot. Unfortunately she leaves it sitting on the counter where later Paula the store manager finds it. She reads it, and based on the handwriting and name of the main character concludes that I wrote it. I am busted.
On Monday morning I come in to work, and when I see Phillip he pulls me aside. He tells me what happened and that I am in trouble. He tells me that if I ever do something like that again I could be fired. He also tells me about the weekly manager’s meeting that took place that morning, and how he had been given the privilege of reading my story aloud to the group.
“Did they laugh at least?” I ask.
No he tells me, they didn’t really get into it that way, the reading was more designed to impress upon them the need to keep a better eye on their employees. I apologize for embarrassing him in front of the other managers, and Phillip, who is always a nice guy, tells me not to worry about it, and may he keep the story?

I think this introduction improves the story a great deal; the context is everything. The story itself is nothing too special, less than a page long and full of inside jokes, but when I do happen to re-read it I like to imagine the words being read in Phillip’s cheerful voice, as his fellow managers listen and soberly take to heart a lesson in productivity.

************

One day Andrew was working in the music department at Barnes and Noble, scanning and alphabetizing the Broadway shows, when Josh Groban walked in.
“Jesus!” Andrew thought, “His eyes are even closer together in person.”
Josh Groban strolled by Pop Rock, pausing only briefly by the Beatles bay, and headed over to Soul. Andrew watched him intently, trying not to be obvious about it, when suddenly Mr. Groban turned and walked directly towards him.
“Do you have any Otis Redding?” he asked.
Andrew showed him the Otis Redding selection, and then Aaron Neville. As he was finding Sly and the Family Stone, Josh Groban made a sudden move towards a nearby emergency exit door, kicking it open and sounding an alarm. Rod Stewart and Eva Cassidy ran into the room and before Andrew knew it a butterfly net had been flung over his head and he been carried out the door, into a waiting van which took off down the road at 60 miles an hour. When Joy, the manager on duty, came to see what was going on she found only an empty music department, the emergency exit door swinging open as the alarm blared.
“Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?” Andrew asked. “Ms. Cassidy, didn’t you recently die from cancer?”
Blindfolded and then gagged, Andrew rode in the van for hours, taken to an abandoned barn in the remote countryside of Pennsylvania. There he was locked in a large room and forced to listen to the mediocre recordings of his abductors for days on end, living on a diet made up exclusively of tepid water and altoids. He died three weeks later from malnutrition, a stream of drool hanging from his lip, only the frailest shell of his sanity intact, and muttering over and over to himself, “It had to be you… It had to be you…”

From the NY Times article The Surreal Bowl

From the NY Times article The Surreal Bowl: From Beyoncé to Hip-Hop Halftime
By KELEFA SANNEH

"If the Super Bowl makes people feel patriotic, it is because the game conjures up a feeling of virtual community: people all over the country, watching the same thing at the same time. And the halftime show began with a statement of patriotism. "Choose your team," John Elway said. "Choose your music," Beyoncé said. Soon the screen filled with people asking us to vote, and to get involved — to choose our future, in other words.

But you can't have it both ways, can you? For most viewers, the Super Bowl isn't a chance to choose at all. (If it were, the Carolina Panthers would probably not have been playing.) For most viewers, the Super Bowl is a chance to watch other people's favorite teams, other people's favorite singers. Viewers forswear the pleasures of choice to savor a different kind of pleasure: the pleasure of joining for the sake of joining. After all, that's an American tradition, too."

I just liked that and wanted people to read it.

Iron Skillets

Last year I had a temp job in the waiting room of a local clinic called Virginia Adult and Pediatric Allergy and Asthma. At the time I told most people I knew about it at length so I will describe it here only briefly.
My job was to sit in the waiting room and hand out cards to the patients as they came in. This did not take long to do, and I spent most of my time there reading books and writing things in a notebook.
I looked through that notebook yesterday and was struck by something that a patient said to me.
An older man said to me, and this is an exact quote:"I collect iron skillets myself. I got over a hundred of them hanging in my garage. Of course they're not all skillets mind you, but most. I'd say ninety percent."
To be fair, let me place his remark in context, so it doesn't seem totally insane. Unfortunately I don't have the rest of the conversation recorded, but I am fairly certain that it went something like this:
Me- "Hi, there's a new sign-in procedure. If you'll let me see your form there I'll give you your new sign in card."
Old man- ""I collect iron skillets myself. I got over a hundred of them hanging in my garage. Of course they're not all skillets mind you, but most. I'd say ninety percent."
Me- "I see. Well here's your card. Good luck with the flu shot."