The Curse of The Empty Wallet

I made the mistake of sharing the "Share This Empty Wallet" graphic and now I'm beside myself with worry that I'll go broke. I was thinking it was probably just a funny graphic and that nothing would come of it. Now I'm not so sure, and my worries are real.

I'm worried because I've thought it over. There was nothing explicitly funny in the graphic. And if it's true -- about me being completely broke in three days -- there has to be some curse mechanism at work. O, if the damned thing had only said, "For Entertainment Purposes Only," I could lean on that for sweet relief! Without that, I can only conclude that the curse has power behind it, similar to carnival gypsies and psychics and the evil eye. And in three days, now two days, my considerable fortune, in the lower thousands, will be wiped out...

There's always the possibility that I could find someone with the power to reverse the curse. But for that much power I might have to spend everything I've got, which would be the same as letting the curse take its course. Hell, I might be able to muster the power to reverse it myself; I'm one of the few humor bloggers in history to have performed a successful exorcism. But there's always the argument that the exorcism was for someone else, whereas in this matter I have full self-interest.

Still, I might study it out -- in knowledge there's power, in power deliverance -- and find some way of reversing it. What if I "gave" all my money to charity, then had most of it given back to me afterward? There wasn't any curse in the Ice Bucket Challenge. I bet I pledged $10,000 and did the Challenge 50 times, and didn't send in a dime. I came out of that OK. In that case there was safety in numbers. This empty wallet thing might've targeted only me, or a select group of Ice Bucket scalawags, let's say. My ignorance is killing me!

How does a curse like this work? Maybe science offers clues. We have X-ray machines that are able to see right through you. The curse could work similarly. It's lurking nearby, sees that you posted its graphic, then latches on to something in your head. Time is ticking away while it holds on, never losing track of its poor victim. It could be latched on to a particular identifier in the brain, such as the particular shade of gray your gray matter is. That's insidious! Were I then to blend in with even a million people going through the turnstiles to safety, it'd pick out my shade of gray and pull me over.

Of course that means there's something extremely conscious about the curse. It has to be like a powerful brain. If I had to guess, it'd likely be on the top floor of the tallest building in town, radiating out, radiating in. On the other hand, maybe it's so powerful, and even likes to show off, meaning it'd likely be in the basement of the shortest building in town! Its power wouldn't even have to be greater than mine, as it knows I'm lending it needed power through my worry.

Quite the racket it's got! It gets money -- my hard-earned money -- merely by posting a stupid graphic that any kidder like me would naturally share. How am I supposed to know it's serious? I'm not, so I post it, then I start thinking. And that's where it entangles me. Now I'm worried, and it's sitting there in the basement going, "Gimme gimme gimme..." Bastard! That's stealing! If this psychic technology slips into the clutches of the Republican Party we're done for. They could have a large progressive message for us to share, but in small print the curse. And the rest is history.

I'd like to know the evil scientist who came up with this. I'd love to go over and stomp in his damned face. Except there's always one little fly in the ointment: Anyone evil enough, insidious enough, to do such a thing would also have powerful defenses. There would be posters everywhere down the hall leading to his headquarters, cursing you left and right. "If you can read this, your mother will cheat on your dad," and so forth. A guy gets home and his mom's in bed with the mailman just as his dad also walks in. "What the hell's going on here!?" Dad bellows. The son takes him aside and confesses, "It's my fault, Dad, I caught an inadvertent glimpse of a cursed poster," like that's a credible excuse for Mom.

OK, I should mention one other problem. I'm already missing some money, meaning the curse is progressive. It's not waiting three days. Coincidental to all this curse business, I had a few of the newest "likers" of my Facebook page of Grandma Slump over to the house last night. They shared a 12-pack of beer, then a few of them had to go in my room to use the toilet. Long story short, I go into my room after everyone's gone and all the change on my dresser's gone. Including all the 1897 coins Grandpa gave me decades ago!

I haven't checked my bank accounts yet, which are online. Frankly, I'm afraid to log-in, since any system smart enough to carry out a curse across town ... is just waiting for me to log-in to the bank. But, if it's already read my mind about the accounts, the money might be dwindling away or even entirely gone. I'm in a fix. I can't log-in to see if I'm saved or damned. I'm dangling helplessly over Financial Ruin Hell!

I still have the power, I hope, to get through to the rest of you. You now know about the "Empty Wallet" curse. If you don't want to lose your money, I implore you, don't share the damned graphic. Take a lesson from me. Look, the veins are bulging out on my neck, that's how distraught I am.

My Disastrous Mind-Reading Tour

Just last Thursday, I shared the glory of my waving tour. I was super-happy with the great reception I got in the various neighborhoods. As I recall, some of those cul-de-sacs don't see five cars a year -- and those are just criminals scoping it out -- so they're grateful a nice guy like me takes time to come through.

Well, it's Thursday again, and this time, darn it, it didn't go as well. I thought, I need to get out there for another tour, but this time something more in depth than waving; this time would be a mind-reading tour. What are people really thinking? We all want to know that from time to time.

Admittedly, I've always had mixed results with mind-reading, going way back to school. Different ones knew I could read minds, so I had a hard time fitting in. One time I got involved with the wrong crowd, and could only get out of trouble by testifying against the others. Yes, they were pissed. But fortunately I could read their minds about what they wanted to do to me. There were obvious cues, including knives and truncheons. My worst memory is of one big bruiser with a motorcycle chain wrapped around his fist. And such a mean look.

It's a gift I don't say much about, but if my motives are entirely good, you know, I figure, What the hey? I'm going to get out there and duplicate the joy I had with the waving tour, I'll get a good reception and everything will be great.

But what happened? I got nothing but negative vibes from the folks. I started on the west side, the ritzier part of town. A lady came out with her little chihuahua, and she thought I was likely a criminal, probably thinking dirty thoughts about her, and sure to be trouble. I considered getting out and having it out with her, except, of course, any hostility would only reinforce her thoughts. Still, I couldn't quite control myself and flipped her the bird, which she returned, lustily. Her little dog also looked spoiled!

At another house at the end of that block, there was a guy mowing his yard. He saw me and was thinking he should probably double check that he'd locked the door, because, "This guy looks like trouble." I should say mind-reading requires intense concentration and staring at the subject. Mere glances give poor results. The guy ticked me off so much I was thinking maybe I should wait till he got to the other side of the house, then come around and steal his gas can. Except, as above, it would only reinforce his thoughts.

In the mid-region of town -- not too rich, not too poor -- this one guy had all kinds of thoughts. According to him, he'd been suspecting his wife of cheating on him on Thursdays, a day he normally works. But he decided to stay home today and catch a glimpse of the bastard. Obviously, he thought it was me! A guy who respects the sanctity of marriage. I continued however to read his thoughts, as he pictured his wife naked at the door meeting some guy. She didn't look bad! Meaning, just to get back at him, maybe I should come back next Thursday.

On my way to the poor side of town, I passed a couple of cops, whose thoughts of me included some insults about the quality of my car, and whether they should pull me over. They reasoned, We've got a quota and there has to be about a million things we could ticket that slob for. But -- and I know it sounds stereotypical -- the donuts they were working on had about three minutes left of peak freshness, so I escaped the dragnet.

On the poor side of town, I also got some bad thoughts. First it was kids, thinking they'd send their little brother into the road. Then when I stopped for him they'd run over and lie down against my tire, looking like I hit them. They'd work out a deal with me, knowing "an old mark" like me would jump at the chance of paying them off. I flipped them the bird too, and called out, "No pay off today, suckers!"

Just then, Mom comes to the door of the house, two other kids hanging from her breasts, and calls them over. She can see they were thwarted, then turns over the thought in her mind that she knows me and might be able to get me for child support for the youngest pair. I'm thinking, "Honey, I've only been drunk one night in my life, the night you were stripping at The Filthy Bird, and you ain't gonna pin those kids on me! You ain't got a DNA sample and I'm gettin' the hell out of here!"

Crazy people and their crazy thoughts. It goes to show what they say is true: Nice guys finish last.

Super Brain

I've mentioned a few times over the years that one of my pet names for myself is Super Brain. It's done wonders for my self-image but has been a detriment to my love life ("Super Brain knows you're in it for the free meals.") Be all that as it may, the name's stuck. And for good reason, thanks to my super brain, silly. The following is an account born in my meditations just this morning:

Super Brain is alone with his thoughts. At this moment he's monitoring the various energies as they go deep, seeing how they generally bypass actual information of a practical nature, inventions that might help mankind in some way, and veer off into fantasy realms, often tripping over themselves.

It's something like "Journey to the Center of the Earth," that story. I'll note it's a lot easier to make the descent than it may be, looking ahead, to get back out. I can't depend on a rock basin atop a volcano ready to blow. Super Brain calculates the odds. The rock basin and volcano being there, pretty good. Blowing at that precise second, less so. Survival with the heat and the difficulties of landing once blown free and clear, also not good. If that happens Super Brain calculates nothing but pain, discomfort, and a terrible death.

But we're far from that point. Super Brain continues to descend to the depths of himself. I see channels of light, synapses larger than most people's. I'm seeing these are synapses that don't mess around. For a lot of people, they're always shorting out, barely making a connection, but these are ones that receive from the previous synapse and add motive power before sending it to the next. Meaning -- ye gods! -- when a thought starts to occur it's already huge and powerful, but by the time it's fully considered, it's Everest! The fact that I can simultaneously shrink it down and make it presentable to others, as in this report, is itself a seismic miracle. Of tectonic proportions. Super Brain double backs on himself with amazement.

That's something to consider, although it threatens to put Super Brain into many simultaneous massive loops. Still, "Know thyself / Physician, heal thyself," -- if Super Brain wants to consider its own mighty workings, vis-a-vis the relation he has to himself -- although this is where a monumental conscious split might happen -- there's great danger in telling Super Brain to settle down. I must be careful not to become multiple Super Brains, as that would crowd out others from their rightful place in sharing the thoughts of the world. It would be immoral to swallow up all consciousness. But Super Brain is like the proverbial 5000 pound gorilla, demanding free reign, meaning we have to stand back and clean up the damage later.

Thinking on Super Brain's thoughts on himself -- how majestic the peaks -- how awesome and unsearchable the terrible depths, with all the power it takes to make it work -- a mighty surge overpowering all other insurgents! Super Brain doesn't fight the same war twice. Super Brain is a dynamic thinking entity of no observable limits. Although Super Brain obviously could observe them if he wanted. Super Brain's cranial habitation does not truly hold it. Another obvious miracle. Super Brain thinks and thinks and thinks and thinks on itself and remains healthy, ever strengthening and doubling in thinking might.

Now I'm going to perform an utterly magnificent feat, to cast Super Brain's thoughts on terrain and realms very far from it. My first stop: Out by the Tastee Freeze. What do I behold in that far off locale, at least 60 blocks from here? They're still closed. They've been closed for decades. You'd think someone would buy the run-down property, tear down the old place, and put something else there. A Taco John or something.

Super Brain sees -- wow! -- an investment opportunity. Super Brain actually truly sees the possibilities of entrepreneurship. All it'd take is a quick call to corporate, a plan that Super Brain might work out with lawyers -- himself able to guide the best legal minds in plush offices around the square. But is that really the direction Super Brain wants to go? It'd be good money. At first, though, his energies would be tied up in hiring teenagers to make tacos, and he can see -- thanks to the vast energies making these thoughts simply occur -- that would be so unrewarding.

Super Brain is not tiring, no. But Super Brain's vast energies are making the body tired. Must direct energies to recharge. Meaning, looking to the gigantic nucleus of pulsing light and dark right at the core of Super Brain, and sending forth power. Energy to the toes! Energy to the hands! Energy to the vital organs! Energy to the organs shriveling from lack of use. Super Brain must make the body more attractive to potential mates. (Troll nursing homes to find rich widows. Have to get them when they're new, before they've signed over the house.) Like spinach, Super Brain makes biceps anvils, hands hammers, dinghy tattoo on chest a battleship. Pipe is spinning, strident music playing, theme song. I'm a whirlwind of hitting objects with my fist and having them land in a more ordered arrangement. I'm strong to the finish.

Super Brain semi-drifts into a quiescent state, the body relaxes. Semi-drifts, because Super Brain continues forever his activity, now monitoring all things in a mighty way, crickets in the pantry, birds outside, and the air conditioner popping on again.

Must rouse myself and get on with my day.

A Death in the Family -- Scarecrow

We just had another death in my family. They seem to be piling up, which I hate. I let the last few go, but finally I've had enough, OK? I don't precisely know any other way to stop it, so I'll just tell you what I'm going to do. Starting with this last one -- then in the future if there's any others -- I will be offing someone from popular culture. Kill my family, will you? Then suffer the consequences.

This time, I'm sorry to say but it's Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz. Old Scarecrow's going away for a long long time -- forever -- like my loved ones, never to return. Again, sorry about this, and sorry if it makes you angry. If it does, at least you'll have some idea how I feel. And if you want to know the honest to God truth, I like Scarecrow. He was Dorothy's first partner on her way to Oz, and for a guy without a brain he did a pretty good job talking, singing, dancing, and fighting wicked witches.

But now it's been years since any of that. The gang's been split up and scattered for years. Dorothy's an old old woman in Topeka, barely making ends meet waiting tables at a diner. And the rest of the group has been out of touch with the others for years. I've had friends like that, then suddenly they're gone, no doubt forever pining to see me again, I'm imagining, if only they could.

Scarecrow, the same way Tiny Tim ended up, is in an old hotel in Des Moines. He stays inside a lot, so much that when people hear he died, they'll say they thought he was already dead. But he can barely move, being broken down, with no one to restuff him. Even that's the least of his worries; he's got total rot in his flimsy supports, brain damage, etc. His spark of life has a faint but persistent short circuit.

If anyone could help, it'd have to be Dorothy, who only answers if she happens to be next to the diner's public phone. Lion and Tin Man are probably in a home somewhere, Lion dribbling in his bib, and Tin Man rusted in the nodding position, more grey than silver.

All the hopes Scarecrow had, dreaming of everyone getting out on the road and doing their songs again, of course that's been out the window for ages. He used to have terrific regret about it, now it's just wistfulness and a dull pain; he wouldn't remember how it went anyway. Age can do that to a guy. I knew an old guy who used to tell me he forgot more than I ever knew, but in the end, as he declined, regrettably I overtook him in the knowing-forgetting differential.

Getting toward the end, Scarecrow heard a noise outside and his hopes rallied. A loud car coming by -- maybe it's them! He struggled to his one good elbow and looked outside, in time to see a young beauty queen in a convertible going by -- so young. She was on her way to be feted by the town, with her young male friends all looking up to her. He thought, That's how it was for us in the Emerald City ... losing his train of thought in a rasping coughing fit.

Memories are so much harder for Scarecrow to contemplate. They used to be like brain-food, who said or sang what, what all they had to do to attain the various boons from the Wizard. Those were the days. If only there were someone like that today, a Wizard, to renew this wasteland of post-modernity and his personal grief. He glances up at the calendar, unturned for decades, 1939, how long ago! No way to catch up now! He turns to the window and sees the grey sky. You'd think the old stuff would still be possible. Instead, everything is-- blank-- the possibilities fizzled.

And so now it's come to this. Pain everywhere, burdens beyond relief. A hardening of the straw tufts, complete calcification of the joints, brittle straw bugs, life ebbing away. He feels a strange mental spasm, some weird movement in his head. Did something erupt? An aneurysm? Wouldn't that be ironic, for a guy who wanted a brain? It hasn't been exactly smooth sailing for quite a while. Now and then consciousness emerges reliably, then veers off a dozen different directions. He senses things going to pot, a little here, a little there ... "That's me all over, and now, for me, it's all over."

As it turned out, no one checked on him. A couple weeks went by and the mailman noticed junk mail piling up in the box by his door. Then he thought he smelled the horrible odor of rotting straw from within. He called the Des Moines police, who carefully donned gas masks and bravely moved in to face the hideous scene.

Three Cheers For Brains

The Wizard of Oz famously said, "Every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth or slinks through slimy seas has a brain!"

To which I say, "Hallelujah! Someone finally gets it!" Because I've been saying a version of that for years. And not only about brains but lots of other body parts, too. This realization came to me early on, which, frankly, might not be something a kid would think of today. They're not as close to nature as we were back then, since we were always going fishing and hunting, then cleaning/dressing the fish and other animals.

I'd look at the animals and point it out to my proud dad that a rabbit has two eyes, a nose, ears, etc., just like we do. And I'd do the same for squirrels, deer, dogs, and even fish. Fish are a little different but the same basic body parts and functions are there. When we'd clean fish, it was one of my least favorite things to cut out their digestive track. But I held my nose and did it anyway. And now I'm glad I did, because it made me aware very early in life that fish also excreted waste.

Of course we had pets, mostly dogs. I really learned a lot about life by observing dogs. One, they appeared to have a brain, just like the man said. Then there were all the other things I'd come to expect, including eyes, a nose, and so forth. Now that I'm thinking back, I actually remembering pointing out to someone that dogs had heads and the basic design of their heads were just like ours.

If you want to think of differences in dogs, between them and us, look where their nipples are. If we were built like that, our nipples would have to be near our waistline! Thankfully it's not that way! Imagine what it'd do for cleavage! The thing about dogs in this regard, though, speaking in practical terms, with evolution in mind, is that they generally have multiple young. So they adapted, the ones with nipples where the young could get to them tending to pass on their genes. Thankfully, they found a happy medium, i.e., where they're located now, since clearly they were running out of room, stopping just shy of the genitals.

I'm sure glad I have a brain. I use it all the time, really for everything. There's not a day goes by that I'm not using it. But I still don't know how to spell pusillanimous without looking it up. Although, since I'm a man, I can come a lot closer than every pusillanimous creature that crawls on the earth or slinks through slimy seas, which also, regardless of their inability to spell, still have brains.