Shadrach Rants

I Know that Pontiac is Pregnant Again, so Y'all Stop Calling Me

2006-12-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

Today was the third time this week that someone has called me to ask if I knew that Pontiac was already pregnant again. Damn it! I don't have time to keep up with idle gossip, not when the very existence of Western Civilization hangs in the balance. The Godfather of Soul is dead -- no doubt poisoned by the Islamic Santa Claus. Now Gerald Ford is dead, too (mostly likely Mad Cow disease in his case). Besides death every morning, I'm dealing with nightmare visions of wharf rats pulling the eyeballs from corpses and using them as the rear wheels on their tiny tricycles, pedaling underneath porches and restaurants and cars waiting at red lights, obviously bent on some hellish plan concocted by Satan himself. Why else would they be hiding under there? Those rats stare back at me with their red eyes and titter like sarcastic devils because I can't reach that far back with a sharpened screwdriver -- you think I have time for gossip?

At age 14, Pontiac was the oldest of the seven kids and Pat figured last summer that it was high time she got out of the house, especially since she already had a baby of her own. (They think it was that meter reader boy with the blue S10, the lisp and the missing right thumb, but Pontiac ain't saying.) That baby scares the hell out of me. It grew one long bottom tooth at age two months and gnawed a hole through its own upper lip. Now the tooth sticks out of its face, just under the left nostril, even with its mouth closed. And ever since it flopped off the hood of Pat's car and landed in gravel, the child looks less like Pontiac and more like Donald Rumsfeld. "Know ye this: it shall come to pass in the last days, that the out-of-wedlock Son of Lucifer will spring forth, and he shall smite the land with hurricanes and fire ants and outbreaks of e-coli." First Book of FEMA 9:11, thus sayeth the Lord, Amen.

I went by Pat's house the day before the wedding, to drop off a gift: one of Cousin Pillard's laying hens. Pat had neglected to pay the electric bill for the past two or three months, so the EMC shut off the power a few weeks back. Good thing I brought a laying hen: all the food in the refrigerator spoiled after a few days, and being that Pat's had a run of bad luck since '83, he didn't have the money to switch on the power or buy enough food.

Dead roaches floated in poison pans in every room of the house, and live roaches scurried all over the walls. Pat's second girl was feeding Pontiac's baby. The devil-child was snapping its mouth at the spoon and lunging at the Gerber jars, the way Aunt Zeelie's dahmunicker chickens tear into the laying pellets after she forgets to feed them for a couple of days. They said Pontiac was in the back room with her mother, trying to use scissors and super glue to make a wedding gown out of a bed sheet.

You'd think the house would be crawling with flies, but no. I think it's because Pat brought home a sack of onions two days before; half the kids were chasing each other through the house, eating the onions like apples. The putrid funk of onion in every room had red-eyed the entire clan, but it also proved to be an organic, all natural eco-friendly way to keep the house free of flying pests.

I quickly learned that the flies had actually visited soon after the refrigerator rot set in. Pat was showing me his feeble garden out back: a tangle of feeble monkey bean vines, fossilized okra, and withered green tomatoes. One of the middle kids -- that boy who crapped on the front lawn and stuck up a sign beside it that read "Look at this" -- stood on the back porch and held up the crisper drawer from the frig and yelled for Pat.

"Boy, didn't I tell you to put that back in the fridge?"

"But dad..."

"BOY! Don't talk back!"

"But dad..."

"I said don't talk back! Just put it back in the fridge!"

"But Dad! There's still maggot eggs on it!"

"Then go scrape it some more!"

I didn't actually make it out to Pontiac's wedding. I would've gone, but something came up (which is a secret I cannot reveal upon pain of death, so don't even ask). All I know is that she didn't marry the meter boy, they had a Gone with the Wind theme, and the kids celebrated during the reception by using M8Os to blow up frogs in the church parking lot. Yeah, I missed all the fun, but when you're talking about Secular Satanism and the destruction of America as we know it, you don't have time to fool around.

Bats are Fornicating Under Aunt Zeelie's Trailer

2006-12-01T04:57:00.000-08:00

Shut up! I don't need you to tell me! I still remember the passcode to the alarm at Clever Hans's condo. Yesterday, that maniac calls me from somewhere in the Caribbean, begging for my help. He's on one of those unholy pansexual freak show bondage cruises he takes -- mistresses, masters, subs, and slaves -- I'm telling you, they will all perish in flame! I'm talking Old Testament style: fire and brimstone, plagues of locusts, killer bees, narcolepsy, and blood-sucking millipedes that attach to your genitals and don't let go until it thunders. But that awful Day of Judgment has not yet come to pass and Clever Hans pays in cash, so I listened while he explained that he was keeping watch on his condo via a web cam, and noticed that the cats' electric shitter box had gone haywire in a non-stop turd raking frenzy -- the cats were freaked out and darting back and forth through the living room.

You think I don't remember when that crazy Nazi was living on the sidewalks along Ponce and eating out of the dumpster at the Majestic? He spent two years roaming back and forth between North Avenue and Moreland, trying to sell "What Would Cthulhu Do?" bracelets, bootleg copies of Mr. Crowe's Garden, and those stupid stainless steel tools he invented to core bananas.

To hell with the cats: I went there to retrieve my Van Q. Temple records and my copy of Swing That Gospel Axe (autographed by Brother Butch Yelton and everyone, except for that camel toe chick -- she just tried to kick me in the shins and jab the pen in my face). Gospel Axe is still not out on CD yet, proof yet again that Satan is still raging in the world today. Clever Hans was holding my albums hostage, threatening to leave them on the dashboard of his Benz and warp the vinyl into oblivion if I didn't come back and repair the damage to his wrought iron fence.

That Venezuelan Hun claims I did it, because he's eat up with the Devil and thinks that everyone else is that way, too. I told him it was the damn tree frogs again, gnawing the iron mullions loose at night when no one was looking, and then whacking my shins with them -- HARD -- every time I walked by. And they don't use those little Kermit hands, either, when they take a swing: they use those fat back legs and split the skin and crack bone if you don't run like hell the minute they start.

Forget about the Knights Templar and eyeballs on the backs of money and puffs of smoke in the photos and that United Flight 911 didn't crash into a Pennsylvania school house but was instead abducted by 150 Islamo-fascists dressed like Sean Hannity. Bats are fornicating under Aunt Zeelie's trailer, spreading their mold-covered filth, clicking and tittering and scratching under the plywood all night long, and all I can do is stay up drinking Community coffee, smoking GPCs, and keeping the 12-gauge loaded and ready for when they break down the door and come for us all.

May the Force be with you. And also with you.

Happy Thanksgiving and That Ain't Squirrel Stew

2006-11-24T05:38:00.000-08:00

Having just got out of Baldwin Prison, Uncle Toe's oldest boy, Rabbit Head Johnson, found a Trackfone just lying abandoned on the back seat of someone's unlocked car and called to invite me to try some of his squirrel stew for Thanksgiving. I should've known better than to have anything to do with Rabbit Head, even if he claims it's just squirrel stew. That boy ain't right.

Rabbit Head did nine months after his failed attempt to contact space aliens. How many times have I told him to leave those damn things alone? They bite. He should have listened to me and stopped all that talk of waterheads and autopsies, when the real problem is not in Roswell, New Mexico. Unholy lizard-demons, commanded by Satan, have been loosed from the pits of Hell and are running amok on the streets of Roswell, GEORGIA, as in the United States of Georgia, installing red light cameras, poisoning the peanut supply, and chasing small dogs into rush hour traffic.

You have been warned!

Rabbit Head built a pipe bomb last New Year's, intent on setting it off in the middle of a Cordele cotton field to create his own ready-made crop circle and landing zone. Wonder he didn't blow himself straight up to the mother ship, since it he was drunk off his ass at the time. Too bad for Rabbit Head: his brain was still foggy from all that thin mash moonshine he stole from me when he set out for a cotton field -- any cotton field -- then lost control of his truck outside Unadilla and flattened a roadside pecan stand. Homeland Security got a good laugh out of it after they figured out he wasn't a terrorist, but the Dooly County Sheriff's department didn't take kindly to the drunk driving part or the crushed pecans.

I didn't even know Baldwin let him out. Nobody tells me anything. Rabbit Head said he hitchhiked up from Hardwick, picked up what was left of his truck from Uncle Toe, and was now working a home remodeling job near Grant Park and living behind a strip mall off Jimmy Carter Blvd. (Yeah, I abbreviated it because I can't spell it. So what? It's better than writing "bull-uh-vard" you bunch of Yankee heathern wheezing azberry slobberama howler-jowlers. "Let he who is without sin use the spell checker." Amen.)

Rabbit Head told me he saw three squirrels climbing around in an oak tree near that Grant Park house they're fixing up, so he shot 'em for stew, but said they were some kind of mutant squirrels, huge, with bald tails, and weird heads. I figured it was more of his crazy UFO talk. But he uses Old Bay seasoning, so how bad could it be? To Serve Man! He cleaned 'em, fed two of the heads to Bollweevil Calhoun's pit bulls, and zip-tied the third head up under the hood of his truck so it would dry out and he could hang it from the rear view mirror without it stinking him out of the cab.

After we ate some of his squirrel stew and sopped it with multigrain rolls he found in the Atlanta Bread Company dumpster, he opened the hood on his Silverado to show me his trophy. Despite the coating of red dust and motor oil, I knew exactly what it was as soon as I laid eyes on it. The Book of Exodus warns: "Keep thee far from a false matter; and the innocent and righteous slay thou not: for I will not justify the wicked." I sure didn't have the heart to tell him that the thing he had strapped to the distributor cap was not a squirrel head, and besides: the wrath of Almighty God would soon rain hellfire and brimstone on the roof of his pickup. Time to get the hell out of there.

So somebody please call Channel Two Action News and have 'em tell that lady from Zoo Atlanta that she can call off the search for those three Mona monkeys that got loose a few weeks back. They can keep their reward 'cause no amount of money is bringing 'em back. Well... except maybe for one of their heads. Soak it in water and Dawn dishwashing liquid for half an hour, and the wrinkles should come right out.

Satan Alive and Well in Cobb County

2006-11-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

Be not deceived! Satan is alive and well and hiding out in Cobb County THIS VERY DAY. For six days in a row, (you already know about 666, so don't act like you don't) I saw a pickup truck with Cobb County tags drive past me, and on the tailgate, the mocking face of Satan stared back at me. "And low, the Evil One will come in the form of a Shining Light." Only in this case, he came in the form of a shining vinyl sticker in the shape of a Chinese pug dog head. The prestige plate declared ILUVPGS. Heathens! Fools! Unholy consumers of unfiltered cigarettes!

Here the truth and run while you still can:

That was no reference to one of those Best of Show freak dogs from Men in Black. It was I love the Premiere God, Satan. You think I don't know? You think I just sit around, scratchin' my ass, spittin' Southern Pride tobacco, and complainin' about the Braves? I am always watching -- Satan is just this close, and can slither out of Cobb County any time! And there he was, right there, staring at me with the Eyes of Darkness and grinning because he thought I didn't see. Now who's the idiot?

Large Venomous Crickets

2006-11-15T06:29:00.000-08:00

Google pays a google for YouTube, which used to be the Groove Tube, and THAT was Chevy Chases's first movie, not Fletch, and now Mr. Vegas Vacation is playing Mel Gibson on Law and Order, guzzling booze and screeching at Jews. Plastic soda straws with blue and green stripes touching each other, Monica Kaufmann's hair coiffed in ancient Druid runes, small aluminum cans that contain enough static electricity to power an ancient pyramid, and lurid photos of shaved lemurs offering same-sex pleasure to each other in the back of The Mystery Machine. It's all so obvious that even Oprah's audience could see it.

Tony Stewart led the most laps and won at Atlanta for the second time, but the real action was when Little Rudy's propane tank exploded Sunday morning in the campground. After a fistful of Xanax and a dozen Jello shooters, Rudy was inspired to combine the flavorful taste of charcoal grilling with the modern effeciency of propane, so he set a propane tank on a bed of smouldering charcoal and left it there to soak.

Thank Providence that no one was hurt: Rudy saw 'em pissin'-n-shittin' in one side of the lake, so he went swimming with the drunks and fornicators in the other side. When that Otto's Auto Parts chick with the bleached blonde mullet and the lazy left eye lost her tube top in the lake, Rudy forgot about the propane tank. Sounded like the air itself ripped in two, and the fireball went a good 65 feet straight up. Flaming briquets left spiraled smoke trails in every direction like a July the 4th Fireworks Finale. The tank regulator went through the windshield of Aunt Zeelie's LTD, tore through the back seat, and shattered the left tailight from inside the trunk. A couple of General Lees had their windows blown out, and a large chunk of tank shrapnel frisbeed over the crowd and smacked into a stack of tires over by Waltrip's Dodge. The explosion echoed back and forth for a couple of seconds, followed by three minutes of congratulatory cheers and spontaneous rebel yells.

Which of course was the distraction I needed. Because after all, Ron White was hiding out in one of the corporate sponsor boxes, and I was determined to find him and settle an old score. I had an in: Clever Hans, that damned Nazi, was guest of some medical services agency in one of the sky boxes, one right next door to one with White and Squeaky Jeff Foxworthy. I told Hans I would wash his Benz once a week for a month, for an extra pass. Thinks he's so smart, thinks I'm just there to watch cars go around in a circle for four hours. I tell you now, brothers and sisters, the crawl spaces are full of large venomous crickets with briars for legs and Vise-Grips for teeth and they are gathering now underneath all the houses in Cabbagetown, waiting for Satan to give the word. "And lo, and then wilt thy people pray for days like 911 when thousands doth scream from cricket attacks, biting and spitting acid, severing spinal cords, feeding on embryonic stem cells, failing not to turn off the porch lights and leaving them on all night. Thus sayeth the prophet, Amen." First Book of Parkinsons 4:12.