I am badly wired, but built for crisis. There is a deficiency in several traits necessary for proper adulting. I have a poor sense of time, a muted threat response, and a formless life that defies structure.  I have learned to cope with this general liability, but there is an upside to existing comfortably within dysfunction. Things collapse frequently, so I am inured to disaster and an expert at rebuilding on the fly. You can rattle a beaver by razing the woods, but a Raccoon will always find an alley. Continue reading →

I was slowly growing a side mullet with branching rat tails down the back. I feel like I may have missed my calling as a crisis barber.

I used to go to a place, touch people, and help them move around…but now those things are mostly crimes. I am a personal trainer in impersonal times. Or I was. I am out of a job, but it is more than that. I have a refined a skill set for a profession that will either move online, or be performed from social distance with due precaution. The idea of poking at my clients with a stick, while mouthing encouragement through the foggy window of a hazmat suit, is deeply unappealing. I may need to recalibrate. Continue reading →

Overview:

Over the course of this series I have reviewed the feckless and pitiable beast of Scotland, the twisted object lessons of Greek mythology, and the bloodthirsty child murdering perverts of Slavic and Germanic myth. Some were monsters worthy of the name, some cruel by circumstance, and others fearful only in appearance. The motivation of the Lange Wapper, the shape-shifting giant of Flemish legend, defies easy categorization. A little backstory:

The Lange Wapper was born in Wilrijk in the 16^th century. And by born I mean a farmer found an enormous garden parsley and red cabbage in his bed, and when the farmer touched the abandoned produce it transformed into a baby. The farmer, a confirmed bachelor,  gave the mysterious infant to his neighbor. The fact that the Lange Wapper was born as two separate vegetables, that spontaneously changed into a single human baby, is never mentioned again, and has nothing to do with his trademark shape-shifting and size changing abilities. He acquired those as a reward for thwarting a local youth gang’s attempt to throw an old woman in the river.

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As I child I was bored, persuasive, and suggestible. The facts of my personhood were uninspiring so I was prone to self-invention, with little regard for plausibility or consistent back story.

I once told my friend Dan that I knew how to teleport. When he demanded proof, I asked him to leave the room, crawled under my bed, wedged myself into the box spring, and held myself there for a couple of minutes. If my arms and legs had been stronger I might have spawned a lasting urban myth, but gravity eventually won out and I was revealed as a liar. The bizarre part was that in the small window of time between Dan leaving and returning, I thought I might actually crack teleportation. I knew the initial claim was groundless, but I figured the pressure of the moment might spur some profound leap in human potential. Continue reading →

I was in Salvador, in Brazil, and I needed to get to an island. I distrusted the potability of the water so I’d been dehydrated for days, and the night before I’d tried to fist fight a hotel manager for demanding my passport. This was my first real travel experience and I was coping badly. Sally assured me things would be better on the Island, a brisk two hours jaunt on a high speed catamaran. She was concerned about my motion sickness, which presented itself in all other forms of travel. I told her that I’d be fine because this was a boat, and I’d never been sick on boat…as the sea was my friend. Continue reading →