Southern Man

Southern Man                                                  1975

Thursday, October 14, 2005-3:36 A.M.

It's cold and flu season, ain't it.....

Today, Pamela and I slept in like we had a gas leak in the house, which is funny, because our furnace is busted, and there's no gas comin' in.  We got that intestinal flu bug that's going around, and I shook it off pretty quick, but Pamela went into a coma.  Harmony's doing well, despite constant contact with two carriers.

I decided today was the day to cement shut the holes in our attic that the squirrels chewed open.  I had purchased the supplies the other day and hiked them up to the attic, and today I went into action.  I mixed the mortar, put the screen in place and started plastering away.

Except the hole was down in the eaves of the attic, and even laying on the floor on my stomach, I really couldn't reach the hole, so I had to make do with a long plank, lowering gobs of mortar down toward the hole.

I patched the first hole, and realized I didn't have enough mix to go after the second, so I had to make my way back to Chase Pitkin's for another bag.  I picked up a nice lantern as well, the better to see the work I was doing.

When I got home, I saw a little red-haired bastard squirrel, poking around the hole I covered, trying to get out.  He had another hole to choose from, about four feet to the right, but it was obvious to me he had no idea it was there, and he was scared as hell.

Squirrels can carry rabies, and I've always been very careful around them; when I was a kid, my brother and I had attic bedrooms, and we had a squirrel invasion that kept us banned from our rooms for a good couple of weeks.  We had to call an exterminator, who caught the little guys and carried them out in big cages while they ran back and forth.

I called an exterminator and explained my plight, and he informed me that there's a good chance I'm harboring 6 to 8 red squirrels, their average family unit.  I needed to unplug the hole I patched, concentrate on getting them back into their regular routine, catching them and releasing them, and THEN plugging the hole.  How fun!  In the meantime, they run back and forth, and I hear them above my head, taunting me.  I can only hold fast to the negro slave's hope that suffering in this world provides reward in the afterlife.

On other topics, I forgot a note from the road....Last week's gig paid me by check, and the next morning, a rainy Friday, I hit a bank in Virginia and cashed the check.  The teller, a nice lady named Debbie, asked me if I had an account, which I did not, as the bank did not have a branch in Upstate New York.  She asked for my I.D., and because I was from out of town, she cheerfully asked me what brought me to Fishersville, Virginia.  I told her I was one of the comedians that played at the Comedy Zone at Mossy Creek Cafe, and she went on and on about how her 15-year-old son loved standup comedy, and wanted to do comedy himself, so I went out and grabbed one of my CD's for him.

Now, before I handed it over, I asked her if it would be o.k. if he heard some mild swearing and possible sexual descriptions, and she said that would be fine, that he liked watching "that colored fellow" on Comedy Central.  Now, she was talking about Dave Chappelle, but I was frozen just a bit hearing someone say "colored fellow" in 2005.  I took it with no umbrage, but it really allowed me a look at a culture clash between the "north" and the "south," even though we were only talking about a distance of 500 miles or so from Rochester, NY.  Later, on the I-81 expressway, I saw a sign for a section of a river called "Blacks Run," and I thought that there must certainly be a double meaning there; I know if I was black, I'd be running. 

I'm turning into Lenny Bruce on stage...I'm a smart ass, know-it-all, who does a modicum of reading and then starts spouting off.  I'm not saying I'm as talented as Lenny, I just mean I'm copping his style in a very unashamed way.  And the more I pay attention to politics in America, the more I feel drawn to commenting on them, which is a very dangerous consideration for a standup comic.  No matter what side you take in political humor, you're gonna piss off half the room, and no comic is good enough to bat .500 and still keep working.  Still, Bush is an idiot, a liar, an egomaniac and a fake Christian, Cheney is a diabolical vampire who is sucking the blood (and money) out of the United States for his Haliburton and oil cronies, Tom "The Hammer" DeLay is a corrupt, human slimeball who ought to be given the Dan Rostenkowski suite in Leavenworth, Bill Frist is a criminal who needs to have an ankle bracelent to keep him from leaving his own house, and the list goes on.  I know as a good Christian I should forgive, but I can only turn the other cheek so many times....I've run out of cheeks.

For now, all I can say to my red-state voter friends, YOU are what is wrong with America.  You're being soaked by the government you helped elect, they are killing you and you helped it happen, you ignorant, cracker dumbasses.  And you can take that to the bank, cash it, and buy yourself a colored butler to slap the shit out of you, you stupid bastards.

I just realized, squirrels have bushy tails, and anything bush or bushy needs to be destroyed. 

O.K., I'm going to sleep now.  Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow morning and not be so cranky, but I don't think so.

Ralph Tetta

Rochester, NY