The Telegram is Coming From Inside the Log Cabin

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for March is called, "The Old Tongue." If you listen to it right now, you can stop reading, which will free up your eyes for four minutes of seductive fluttering. 

If you prefer to read, and there is no one between you and the computer screen you want to seduce, this is your lucky email. This month's literary offering is the synopsis of a terrifying new chiller/thriller I am writing/optioning. This story follows the sexy lives and gruesome deaths of four smoking-hot former First Ladies. The title (and I'm prouder of this than anything else I've ever done) will be, "Body Count Gushmore." At first, it reminds you of Mount Rushmore, but this title has layers of meaning, and the second layer makes you think about grisly murder.

Body Count Gushmore*

by Zach London

Chapter 1:

(The Mount Vernon library.)

Martha Dandridge Custin Washington trips over a loose floorboard and lands on all fours. She lifts up the floorboard to reveal an ancient book, bound in peculiar pale leather that has nipples and a rash. The book is called the "Lexicon Asmocropolai", and it contains incantations for summoning demons. Martha decides to undress slowly, and read the book aloud while taking a hot, steamy bath. Suddenly, the bathwater starts to boil, and a swarm of winged hellbeasts pours out of the fireplace and into her screaming mouth. Special effects occur, and she dies.

Chapter 2:

(The streets of Richmond, Virginia.)

Martha Wales Skelton Jefferson turns up her nose at a haggard street augur. The jilted fortune teller vows to get revenge. Martha laughs dismissively, and returns home with the intention of undressing slowly and enjoying a hot, steamy bath. While she is rubbing lotion on her arms, the street augur sneaks into her parlor and replaces her husband's bottle of wig powder with a different bottle; one that is shaped like a claw and glows a little. That evening, Thomas Jefferson applies the cursed powder to his wig, and gradually develops an unquenchable craving for brain-based cuisine. He chases Martha around the oval office, trying to puncture her skull with a quill. Eventually, she loses him, and leans against a wall to catch her breath. Ah! His arms burst through the wall and grab her. Somewhere, the augur is laughing violently. 

Chapter 3:

(A log cabin, somewhere in a scary as hell forest.)

Mary Todd Lincoln is babysitting. The "little twerps" are misbehaving, so she puts them to bed early. As she is undressing slowly to take a hot, steamy bath, she receives a telegram that reads, "are you alone? -(STOP)-" At first she shrugs it off, but 10 minutes later, she receives another telegram, this one reading, "mary tod lincoln is gong to be stabbed at  -(STOP)-"

Now terrified, she writes a two-page letter explaining her situation, and dispatches a pony express rider to the nearest police outpost, 20 miles downriver. When the police receive her letter, they send a courier by steamship to the Telegraph and Cable Office. As Mary Todd Lincoln anxiously waits for assurances from them, the windows keep blowing open. Finally, a dispatcher arrives with an urgent communiqué from the Telegraph and Cable Office. It reads, "Dear valued customer: Get out now, the telegram is coming from inside the log cabin!" She tries to escape, but it is too late.

Chapter 4:

(The executive mansion, Washington, D.C.)

Ignoring the pleas of everyone, Edith Kermit Cardow Roosevelt makes arrangements for a new East Wing of the White House to be built on an Indian burial mound. To expedite construction, she digs up all the graves herself, displacing the bones of Chief Otaktay ("Killer Among Killers") and pocketing an amulet that she pries out of his skeletonized hand.

Since it is midnight and she is alone, she decides to strip down to her underwear and use the light of the full moon to complete the final calculations for her unholy cloning research. While slowly undressing, she inadvertently knocks an old blind man into the grave. In his dying breath, the blind man asks her if she was aware that people in their neighborhood have been disappearing mysteriously. He also mentions that he hears a surge of poisonous beetles on the horizon. 

Mrs. Roosevelt ignores these warnings and hides the man's body under her porch. Proceeding inside, she sees her children hovering eerily in the hallway, their eyes rolled back, babbling an octave too low in an ancient language. Just to make sure they are okay, she hugs and kisses each of them. Then she remembers that she left something important under the porch with the dead blind man. As she squeezes into the dark crawlspace, she finds an artifact that can only be described as "a puzzle to unlock a portal to Hell," and she solves it.

Then she goes inside and takes a hot, steamy bath.

With warmest regards,

Zach

* Alternate title: Mount Much-Gore

1000 Generations of Rock

Dear Friends,

   At the beginning of a post-college summer road trip around the country, my companion and I endeavored to write a song about every state through which we passed. We dubbed the entire campaign, "Road Trip '97: A Thousand Generations of Rock," and by the end of the first week, we had penned anthems about Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida. By time it was North Carolina's turn, unfortunately, the well we beginning to run dry, and we had to think about revising our objectives. Here is what I had written in my journal from that day:

6/12/97

Possible dream goals/life missions:

1. Write a song for every state. (Not realistic. Veto.)

2. Have sex with a unicorn in every state. (Repulsive, even less realistic. Veto.)

3. Eat at a Taco Bell in every state (Delicious, and very realistic. In fact, we already did this in the first seven states without noticing.) (Also, Crunchy.)  

And that, as you may have guessed, is quite possibly where the name "Hard Taco" came from. One song per state for one month turned into one taco per state for one month, which eventually turned into Hard Taco: one song per month. Do you believe it? I wouldn't.

This month's Hard Taco song, "For North Carolina and the Others," summarizes the rest of that road trip. It's sweet and nostalgic, and does not involve bestiality, mythical or otherwise.   

Ever since I Found America, I have been longing to share my favorite experiences with the rest of you. Here is a guide to the nation's most excellent tourist attractions. 

Tennessee - Be sure to visit the Museum of Appalachia, where you can stroll through a garden of overturned outhouses and detuned banjos. Then, watch a video of an edentulous woman holding sheep by their hind legs while enumerating her home remedies for their fulminant skin diseases. By then it will become apparent why the early settlers named the region Appalachia, the Latin word for "anything appalling."

 

South Carolina - Be sure to get tickets to the Comedy Cabana in Myrtle Beach, where every Friday is Yeats Impersonators Night. My opinion: "Young Yeats" has a better Irish accent, but "Fat Yeats" is truer to the poet's unremitting self-realization of the cyclical countertheories of spiritual life.

Georgia - Be sure to visit the beautiful coastal city of Savannah. Motor traffic in the downtown area is terrible thanks to an 1834 city ordinance that mandated that a historic anchor be placed on a pedestal in the middle of every intersection.

Florida - Be sure to visit the secluded home of Ward Stone Ireland, the man who invented the court reporter typewriter ("the stenotype machine") but didn't tell anyone, and just used it for his own home court reporting needs.

Alabama - Be sure to listen to music made by dead people while passing through Alabama. If you drive through the state at the speed limit on Interstate 65, there will be precisely enough time to listen to one song by every musician who committed suicide. If you take interstate 10 through the Southern part of the state, there will only be enough time to listen to songs by musicians who died from urinary tract infections.

Nebraska - Be sure to visit the Omaha headquarters of Bozell Worldwide, one of the oldest advertising agencies in the world. They have kept complete video archives of their client interactions dating back to the founding of the company in 1921. Highlights include a black and white film of a mustachioed advertising executive making one of their most famous pitches:

   "You're looking for something sleek, a logo with simple lines and contrasting colors that says, 'Hey, check me out!' Ladies and gentleman of the National Socialist Party, I give you... the swastika! Imagine, if you will, this eye-popping logo on T-shirts, on billboards, and on thousands of armbands. It grabs your attention, it pulls you in, it makes you want to march!"

Washington - Be sure to check out the Pike's Place market, where they are famous for throwing fish against the wall to knock off some of the loose mercury. These fish are quite pricey, but budget shoppers can purchase "no mercury added" fish.

  

Oregon - Be sure to visit Coast Redwood National Forest. The unique species of sequoia that is native to this region is the only tree on Earth that can used to make ultrathin cardboard. After a devastating forest fire here in 1992, the business reply card industry was paralyzed for several years, and no one could renew their magazine subscriptions.

California - Be sure to see the Ronald Reagan Presidential Diet Museum, and see videos and news clips about all the diets that the former president went on during his terms of office. The attached Presidential Diet Library contains his impressive private collection of over 20,000 nutritional brochures and over 30 years of the president's personal calorie counting logs.

Colorado - Be sure to bring your sweetheart to Invesco Field, where the two of you will be harnessed and suspended by "Bronco-crane" in front of the Jumbotron. Now pucker up, you lovebirds! The Mile High Photographer will take your picture kissing with the giant screen in the background. When your friends see this picture, they will be convinced that you were caught smooching on the Jumbotron!

With warmest regards,

Zach

Postcards from Panama, Part 2

Dear Friends,

   The Hard Taco song for January is called, "Poof (Are You Unna Dance?)." People sometimes ask me if I ever get tired of coming up with the genre-defining hip hop songs that shape the format for decades to come. The answer is yes, it's exhausting.

  

With warmest regards,

Zach

Postcards from Panama, Part 2

12/21/09

Dear Karen,

Thank you so much for writing back! I read your letter a vast number of times, and I couldn't help but notice the part where you said that you are allergic to oats. That may be hard to explain at restaurants, especially down here in Panama if you don't speak Spanish. I have decided to order you a custom T-shirt with a smiling Quaker and a big red X over his face. The size of the shirt will be medium. I realize that you could fit into a small, and I am in no way implying that you are in any way fat, but I think that the Panamanian waiters may be embarrassed to look at your T-shirt if it is too tight (they are very polite), and might miss the message that you are not in favor of oats.

Speaking of T-shirts, I saw a great slogan that I believe in with all my heart: "Be living simply so that simple people can also live." It struck a chord with me, because I don't believe in unnecessary luxuries. If you are looking for a man who will invest in opulent frills like a giant round bed, you will need to look elsewhere! It's hard enough to find sheets for a giant round mattress, let alone plastic sheets if one still has a problem with bed-wetting. (I'm taking a class on self-hypnosis and by time we are married, I guarantee this will no longer be a dire issue.)

After reconsideration, I will order custom-made round bedsheets, in case you conclude that my rectangular mattress is a "deal-breaker."

With warnest regards,

Michael

12/23/09

Dear Karen,

I took a closer look at your letter, and I think you actually wrote that you're allergic to cats, not oats. Your handwriting is fine (it's actually really nice.) I was probably just reading the letter too fast or at the wrong angle. I'm guessing that you were mentioning your cat allergy because I informed you that my cat, Otis Redding, will live with us when we are married. Your letter makes more sense now, although I thought you were mentioning your oat allergy out of the blue as a "getting to know you" kind of thing.

I am going to go ahead and send you the medium-sized anti-Quaker shirt anyway, because I was already done designing it online by time I figured out the mistake. You shouldn't wear it to restaurants, because they will incorrectly deduce that you don't want lots of oats, but you could still wear it to church, assuming that you do not go to a Quaker church. 

Have you ever seen the comic strip where the Sarge says %$@! in one frame and *&@# in the next frame? I'm not naive... I  know these are supposed to be swear words, but I have been trying to crack the code to figure out WHICH swear words. I think @ is a vowel or a very common consonant, because it seems to be in both words.

With warmest regards,

Michael

12/27/09

Dear Karen,

When you move down here, be sure to vacuum before the movers come. Here's a cautionary tale that explains why: You probably remember my family moved away after 10th grade. (The science fair incident was a factor in that decision, but there were lots of other factors.) My dad had arthritis in his pelvis, so we hired some Mexican movers to pack and unpack for us. Three of the five of them were brothers. They were not very tall, but not a single one of them had joint aches or other joint-related problems like my dad. Here's the part that is amazing: The movers picked up stray pieces of shredded cheese that had fallen under the kitchen table, packed them in bubble wrap, boxed them up, and labeled the boxes "Kitchen." When we got to our new house in Carson City, they unpacked the shredded cheese underneath the kitchen table again. Doesn't that just make your jaw drop? I was just in high school at the time, but I know we gave them an excellent tip.

My neighbor, Dignidad, is teaching me how to make paper. You'll never guess what the main ingredient is. It's paper! You actually put paper in a blender with water and a few other ingredients, and roll it out to make new sheets of paper. Apparently, this is how it is done the world over.

With warmest regards,

Michael

12/29/09

Dear Karen,

I wanted you to know that I gave away my cat, Otis Redding, so you can safely move here any time that is convenient for you. Even if you weren't allergic to her, I was going to give her away anyway, because she needs more freedom than I can ever provide her. She will be living next door with my neighbor, Dignidad, and we can visit her any time.  I still have a small vial of her blood from when we were thinking about screening her for feline leukemia, but they wouldn't run the test because the vet couldn't accept personal checks. The vial is airtight, so you should be safe from the blood allergens, but I will put clear tape over the top of it, because you can never be too sure about these things!

Dignidad is a man, in case you were curious. His name means dignity. A lot of Panamanians name their children after virtues like tranquility, etiquette, good value, or loftiness. Dignidad's wife is named Cortesia Sobriedad, which means courtesy sobriety, and she has promised that Otis Redding will be well-cared for. Unlike SOME cultures, the Panamanian people do not eat cats, so don't be worried. 

With warmest regards,

Michael

12/31/09

Dear Karen,

I went back and looked at your original letter again. Even though the letter was very short, I could tell that you are a great writer because you used a theme sentence at the beginning of the paragraph. I would certainly like to honor your request to "please stop writing," but before I do, I'm going to have to ask for a clarification.  Do you want me to stop writing? Please let me know exactly what you mean by this, preferably by sending me another letter with more details about your life and your feelings. Also, please include a return address, because I'm still writing to you at your parents' house! I certainly do not want to bug you if you find these letters annoying or not informative enough, so I will try to make them more informative. Did you know that the Panamanian tamborito is a Spanish dance blended with Native American rhythms, themes, and dance moves?

I'm thinking about coming back to the United States at some point. There is simply too much grocery cart theft here, and I don't want our children to be exposed to that. Let me know how you are doing. What have you been up to?

With warmest regards,

Michael

Tales of a 4th String Nothing

Dear friends,

The Hard Taco song for December is called, "Suds." As a good meal is matched with the right wine, music should be paired with concordant activities. This song is best enjoyed when bathing, drinking, or drowning.

The Hustler Award

I always tried to avoid sports that involved touching people. Most of the physical contact I had with my schoolmates went like this: One of them would punch me, and in return I would bite his arm and pull his hair.  As my penchant for biting and hair-pulling became widely-known, the punching tapered off. I had finally achieved this happy state of equilibrium when I received the calamitous news that I had to try out for the 8th grade basketball team or forfeit my allowance. My parents wanted me to be "well-rounded." More specifically, they wanted to enrich me with the opportunity to fail at lots of different things.

Failure was inevitable. I had skipped kindergarten, and was a late-bloomer anyway. At 4'10", the only person on the court who was shorter than me was the littlest cheerleader (the one who got thrown). As my classmates were quick to remind me, she, at least, could jump. To the chagrin of both the coach and me, he wasn't allowed to cut anyone from the basketball team. Instead, we were divided into castes, or "strings." The 1st stringers played most of the game, and the rest of us would split their leavings.  Unfortunately for me, one's "string" level was inversely related to one's Tanner stage. 

1st string (Tanner Stage 5):  Mr. Conforti, the coach, buys you a Bayside Bulls warm-up jacket with his own money. 

2nd string (Tanner Stage 4):  You only play for 15 minutes per game, but you still get your own locker during away games.

3rd string (Tanner Stage 2-3): You only play during the cheerleaders' cigarette break. The coach calls your parents and talks to them about better property taxes in other school districts. 

I was on the 4th string, a classification invented to describe myself and my friend Jason. Jason had congenitally small fingers on his dribbling hand, and he was ahead of me on the depth chart. For me to see any playing time, two criteria had to be met. 1) Our team had to be ahead by more than 15 points by the closing minutes of the third period and 2) a player ahead of me had to be "injured." In eighth grade basketball, no one ever really got hurt, but sometimes a boy would suddenly throw up during play. As peculiar as this seems, this happened regularly and without warning. When it did, the "injured" player would be escorted to the locker room, and everyone would get to sub up to the next level. If the right combination of people was vomiting, my number might be called. 

When I did come in off the bench, I always gave it everything I had. I never made a basket, but if I got to play for two minutes, I would spend that two minutes biting the arms and pulling the hair of every opposing player on the court. I was a competitor.

At the end of the season, Mr. Conforti brought us all back to his classroom and thanked us for a great year. He announced that Lamont Brown was the winner of the MVP Award, and we all cheered.  

Then Mr. Conforti surprised everyone in the room by singling me out for the "Hustler Award." I can't remember the exact words he used, but essentially, the Hustler Award was granted to the player who kept showing up for practice despite obvious futility. He said that sometimes he would look down to the far end of the bench and see my hopeful eyes looking back at him as if to say, "Are you gonna put me in, Coach?" When I looked at him like that, he said to a roomful of my peers, he would get a little choked up.

So Lamont Brown and I both left that classroom holding shiny plastic basketball players. His was a portent of future success in high school hoops. Mine was a charity trophy, achieved through a scrappy ineptitude that evoked a baffling emotional incontinence in my coach. Paradoxically, it was both one of the proudest and most embarrassing moments of my life, and incidentally, it would be the only sports trophy I would ever get.

Someday, when I'm forcing my own children to participate in activities they hate, I will show them the trophy. "Your dad was a hustler," I'll tell them with quavering voice, "a well-rounded hustler. So if you don't practice your clarinet right now, I will bite your arm."

With warmest regards,

Zach 

Tough as Boots

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for November is called "Alpha Mom." A parody of this song will one day be featured in "Guitar Hero - Al Yankovic North American Tour." I'm hoping for either "Alfalfa Mom" or "Balfour Aplomb," the latter being a reference to the great composure of the Englishman who facilitated Israel becoming a Jewish state. I'm just throwing those out there. The ball is in your court now, Weird Al.

Anti-Semitism in the Upper Peninsula and Why It's My Fault

Like most small towns, Houghton, Michigan didn't have a particularly robust Jewish community in the early 1980s. When you're the only Jewish kid in school, you have to be tough as boots. I learned early on that if a classmate said something hurtful like, "You killed Jesus," the correct response was to gnash my teeth and scream, "That's right I killed him! That's right I killed the son of God! Who's next?!" As the saying goes, a lamb has to grow claws to survive among rams.

When we lived in Houghton I had a neighborhood friend named Wilhelm Greuer, and I absolutely idolized him. He was a year older than me, and by the age of 8 he was printing and distributing a home made newspaper, The Houghton Bugle. The Bugle featured Wilhelm's opinion pieces ("Walter Mondale is Way Rad") and my own guerilla journalism ("School Closes on Certain Days When There's Lots of Snowing Sometimes Sometimes.") Wilhelm was also responsible for the comics section, but since we didn't know how to print anything other than text, they were more like miniature screenplays:

(Charlie Brown and Lucy are standing. In the background there is a straight line, representing the horizon.)

CHARLIE BROWN: Lucy, how old are you?

LUCY: A woman never reveals her age.

CHARLIE BROWN: What year were you born?

LUCY: 1979.

CHARLIE BROWN: Then you must be five.

LUCY: You blockhead!

I liked to spend as much time as I could at Wilhelm's house. When I wasn't scouring the Wall Street Journal for headlines that we could plagiarize, I would run my hands over their furniture, hoping to pick up loose pieces of his sister Frederika's straight blonde hair, which I had an inexplicable desire to touch.

Wilhelm and Frederika were first generation German-Americans, and based on our limited discussions about World War II, it was clear that their family didn't really buy in to the whole blame game thing. Wilhelm once told me that the Holocaust, while regrettable, happened because the Jews kind of got in Hitler's way.

Okay, I guess that makes sense. Wilhelm was older than me and smarter than me, after all, and I didn't see any reason to doubt his logic. Why point fingers? Hitler was inconvenienced, one thing led to another, some unfortunate stuff happened, and now everything is fine, here we are, and isn't that Frederika's hairbrush over there?

Really, the only thing that came between myself and the Greuer family was my own gluttony. Mrs. Greuer kept a silver canister of fancy German Gummi candy out on their living room table. I asked about it politely, and she told me that it was imported and that I was not allowed to have any.

The phrase "not allowed to have any" needed further clarification. At my house, leaving candy anywhere it could be seen, smelled, or reached by stacking chairs and climbing on top of the refrigerator was an open invitation to eat it. If my parents had candy that wanted to live to see the sun go down, they would place it in a safe deposit box and hide the key in a bee hive. 

Meanwhile, the Greuer's weren't just displaying a 3-pack of SweeTARTS. This was luscious, multicolored imported Gummi candy, in a silver canister no less. I knew it was off limits. I knew that if I stole the candy, I would be reinforcing whatever stereotypes I assumed they had about me, but in the end, it didn't matter. I pinched those German Gummis, twice in fact, and Mrs. Greuer caught me both times. So yes, dear EVERY JEWISH PERSON NORTH OF THE MACKINAC BRIDGE, I am the reason none of your neighbors like you.

The next year we moved to Milwaukee, presumably so my family could escape the stigma of my sticky fingers. There were plenty of Jewish kids in my new school, but we lived in a predominantly Catholic neighborhood. The closest thing to anti-Semitism that I experienced was when one of the McDevitt boys would drive by me and yell "Read the Torah!" out the window of his car. Then he would turn around in a cul-de-sac, and drive past me the other way, yelling, "Read the Torah!" just to reinforce his point. I wasn't really sure if that was intended to be an insult or paternal advise, akin to "Stay in school! Get a library card!" But read the Torah? Didn't he know I wasn't old enough? Maybe because I was so tough as boots he assumed that I was 13 instead of 9.

Too Dirty for Apple

When the newest Hard Taco album became available on iTunes about a month ago, I was startled to discover that the iTunes Store had slapped the "Parental Advisory" sticker on the album and deemed 18 of the 19 songs to be Explicit. Boo! (As in "Boo, I'm scary!" Not as in "Boo, I'm crying!" It was just Halloween, after all, not Valentine's Day.) What makes these songs explicit? The leading theory, dear EVERYONE WHOSE EMAIL ADDRESS I KNOW, is that they are too sincere and charmingly personal for anyone under 40.

With warmest regards,

Zach

Fiestaware-Induced Superpowers

Dear Friends,

The Hard Taco song for October is called, "Muscle Memory." I strongly encourage you to use this as your audition song on "So You Think You Can Dance." Rest assured, none of the other contestants will be dancing to my father's trombone playing, and that itself should be enough to get you to the final 8.

Infertility: The Consequence of Unavoidable Actions

Mr. Feltyberger asked our AP Physics class to break up into pairs and stand with our partner at one of the lab benches. At each station was an object; a rubber duck, the mantle from a camping lantern, a rusty thermometer, a shapeless lump of metal. Ethan and I chose a station and inspected what appeared to be a piece of a broken plate with a glossy orange finish. Mr Feltyberger announced, "One of the objects in this room is radioactive. I will go from station to station with a Geiger counter and we will use it to find out which one."

I was immediately disappointed. There was no way that my broken orange plate was radioactive. I was 100% sure. Jyothi Vinnakota had laid claim to the shapeless lump of metal, and she was already smiling, because everyone knew she had chosen the radioactive object, and the rest of us were wasting our time. Stupid radio-inert plate shard.

So I did what any 16-year-old boy would do with fragment of dinnerware that was decidedly not radioactive.

I put it down my pants.

This was quickly followed by a loud announcement to my lab partner, "Oh no! I accidentally put the radioactive plate down my pants!" I placed my hands on my cheeks and shook my head from side to side with mouth agape in feigned terror. I was confident that this was a pretty accurate impersonation of a man with an object in his pants that was emitting dangerous doses of radiation. Did Ethan find this hilarious? Yes he did.

Meanwhile, Mr. Feltyberger held the Geiger counter up to the box of fertilizer. No sound. Mr. Feltyberger held the Geiger counter up to the shapeless lump. No sound. "Huh," I said, and removed the plate from my pants.

The rusty thermometer? No sound. The Geiger counter continued its voiceless journey from station to station. At each object, the tension heightened, as if Mr. Feltyberger were saying, "Duck..... duck...... duck....." The old coffee tin? No sound. When I looked down at my station I no longer saw a broken plate, but a shiny orange shard of doubt. Radioactive things are supposed to glow or at least make a subtle humming sound, right?

If you've never heard a Geiger counter, it sounds vaguely reminiscent of a DJ scratching out a beat on vinyl. When Mr. Feltyberger pointed it at my shard, the DJ went to town. I felt strangely itchy. I closed my eyes and imagined that the scratching was the sound of Run DMC bursting through the classroom door. As the beat started, the rappers stood back-to-back with their hands on their shoulders and started laying down rhymes...

DJ Run: Well they call me Run

DMC: And my name's Darryl

DJ Run: And your 501's are filled with... peril!

DMC: Cuz Sucka MC's gonna end up... sterile!

DJ Run: For dropping that nuke down your... apparel!

DMC: The orange glaze was uranium... laced!

DJ Run: So now you got ill with a nuclear...

Both: Waist!

Jam-Master Jay and Geiger Counter: Wik-wik-wik wikky wikky woo!

Mr. Feltyberger than explained that the reddish-orange Fiestaware got its distinctive color from depleted uranium. Obviously, it was not safe to eat off these plates, so the line had been discontinued in the early 70's.  

And so I spent the next 12 years of my life convinced that I would never sire a child, or at least one with an even number of nipples. Happily, this turned out to be a baseless fear, and when my kids were born with the traditional allotment of limbs and organs, I quickly blocked out the Fiestaware Incident.

Then yesterday, I was watching my children play. Scarlett was sitting on the floor and Malcolm walked over and sat in her lap. It was if they were stacking on top of each other, and they fit together almost too perfectly. I began to wonder, could it be that these children have… unusual aptitudes? Then I realized that all of those years I had been worried about the wrong thing. My children are not normal. They will never be like the other kids, because they are endowed with special, unnatural... plate powers.

With warmest regards,

Zach

It Doesn't Take a Genie

Dear Friends,

    I am pleased to announce that a large box of new Hard Taco CDs is sitting in my kitchen, and like all things on God's brown Earth, it has a name. The box is called "box," and the album is called, “and then the training takes over…” The new disc is truly a sensual massage of all four of your senses.

(I warned you to stop using Zicam, but did you listen to me?)

   This CD features a handful of previously unreleased songs about GREAT AMERICAN WARS which will direct a relentless blitzkrieg on your remaining three senses.

(Seriously, why would you keep liquid nitrogen right next to your mouthwash and in an identical bottle?) 

   However, even without these exciting military-themed tunes, this CD is nothing less than a merciless steamrolling frenzied onslaught/assault on both of your senses.

(Just to clarify... you're wearing that blindfold just in case you happen upon a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey?)

Scarlett's Recording Debut

The Hard Taco song for September is called, "Roughhousing Robots." This is a milestone for us, because it is the first song in our oeuvre to feature vocals by a local up-'n'-comer, Scarlett London. You will be moved, touched, softened, disconcerted, placated, ruffled, and completely melted by her performance. Then you will hear her second line, and you will experience an entirely different set of emotions.

And now I will throw a bone to the majority of readers who scan the HT Digest looking for content that has nothing to do with music by presenting an fragment entitled:

The Startling Origins of Common Expressions

Common phrase: "Children are like sponges."

Original phrase: "Sponges are like children."

In 1849, the Lynchburg General Store began to market huggable sponges to young women who had been rendered infertile by malnutrition and weevils. The phrase "sponges are like children" became so engrained into to the vernacular that when child labor laws were ratified a decade later, it became illegal to mop up a spill with a sponge that was less than 16 years old. 

Common phrase: "It doesn't take a genius to know..."

Original phrase: "It doesn't take a genie to know..."

This expression became ubiquitous after a rash of magic lamp-finders squandered all three wishes by asking the genie to verify the following:

1. Inhaling poisonous fumes isn't the most healthy thing to do.

2. There is a problem when the "Check Engine" light comes on.

3. Meg Ryan might have had plastic surgery.

Common phrase: "Starve a fever, feed a cold."

Original phrase: "Starve a beaver, feed a toad."

The odds of surviving an illness in the 17th century were greatly increased by having ample firewood to keep warm. This expression built on the common misconception that beavers ate wood, and that toads ate beavers.

Common phrase: "No Skin off My Nose."

Original phrase: "No Skin on My Nose."

This is said to be an observation made by Joan of Arc shortly before her death, in reference to one of the more noticeable effects of being burned at the stake. For unclear reasons, the expression has taken on exactly the opposite meaning over time. Another example of this phenomenon is the phrase "Don't let the cat out of the bag," which originally was, "Don't! Let the cat out of the bag!"

Next month: the startling origin of the phrase, "When life gives you ovals, make Ovaltine."  

   

Sincerely,

Zach