-Eugene Baldwin's – The Genehouse Chronicles

February 16, 2016

My friend Ken Burch died just before Christmas. His wife Kathy is one of my closest pals, so close that she could, if she chose, write about my secrets and expose just how damaged I really am.

Ken had a nice, warm brown leather jacket that I admired. Kathy gave it to me after the funeral. Now I wear it around town, and strange women approach me and pet the jacket and rub my bald head for luck. I’ve had three proposals of marriage—two said they wanted to marry the jacket.

Today, I got coffee and turkey chili at Panera’s, and two girls in yoga pants wiggled their hips at me. And you know, enough sexism is enough sexism. So I drove home and put the leather jacket on the easy chair in my office. I took my afternoon nap and meditated cleansing thoughts and waited for Scout the cat to join me. She didn’t.

When I awoke, my cat was wide awake, her body planted obscenely on the leather jacket in the office. Her eyes slitted and unslitted: her way of communicating that she was, uh, really-really-really, uh, happy. If you know what I mean.

My first thought was to lift my pussy off of the jacket, to avoid getting claw marks in the leather. When the pussy growled, I reconsidered, avoiding claw marks on my boys from down under. When the pussy bunched the jacket between her legs, I was horrified. I had never seen such female pleasure.

My cat . . . was into leather. It was too late to call Cat Fancy Magazine and ask for help. The vet was closed. Sheila S. didn’t answer her phone. Farmer Orville said, shoot the cat. What to do?

Poetic License: Change of Tense . . . Her purr now, as I write, is guttural, transcendent, whole grain, other worldly, orgiastic, gluten free, repressed Republican, randy, rowdy Rhonda Rousey (who appears in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue with a bathing suit painted on her naked, supple, muscular body), raucous, radiating, rummy, rhapsodic, ravenous, rollicksome.

I open a can of tuna fish. Nada. I spread catnip around the floor. Zilch. I bring in Orville’s male barn cat, the most affectionate cat on the planet. He jumps onto the leather jacket, and now the two of them are necking, catsatiated.

Oh well. I’ve got that puffy winter coat from Bass Pro Shop. What type of woman would pet a puffy coat?

“Hi, y’all. I am Emmy Backscratch—from the Bunker Hill Backscratches. I am eighty-one, and I’m lookin’ for ‘bunny love.’ Know whut I mean?”

Bunny love is illegal in Illinois, but what the hell?

February 14, 2016

Scali-a, I just met a judge named Scalia; . . ./ You died while shooting game; we’ll never be the same again; Scali-a, Al Gore kissed the ass of Scali-a/Your belly oh so round, your judgments so unsound to we!/Scalia: curse it loud and the right wing beats you;/Say it soft as Fiori-i-na eats you;/Scalia, Scalia, I’ll never stop raging Scaliiiiiiii-uuuuuuuh!

Scali-a, you said blacks were dumb-dumbs, Scali-a;/Clarence T. your honey bun, and whites are #1 to thee . . ./Scali-a, who said money’s speech: ass-Scali-a./Your upper crusty sneer, your Michelle Bachman leer, whoopeeeeeeeee!/Scali-a, bellow loud as your Prince Satan greets you,/And stay calm, as the hellfires up-heat you;/Scalia, Scalia, I’ll never stop dissing Scaleeeeeeeeeeuh!

Scali-a! Scali-a! Scaleee-uh, Scaleee-uh/ Scaleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-uhScaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalia, Scali-a;

Say out loud that the poor need ID tags,/Say so soft that Obama’s a dirt bag!/Scalia, I’ll never stop dissing . . . Scali-uhhhhhhhh . . .

The most bullyboy sound I’ve ever heard:

Sca . . . leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-uh-uhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Sincere apologies to Stephen Sondheim

February 11, 2016

There is just enough lace on the ground, darker grasses poking through and bending in breezes. And there is pepper liberally sprinkled on the cornfield, a thousand blackbirds gobbling up the last grain. One hunter glides over the cackling mob, west to east: a Cooper’s hawk, causing ripples in the black spice. Perhaps the predator doesn’t care for pepper.

Beneath my birdfeeder lines of bird tracks, like eighth notes on staff paper, undulate in the lace around the tree. The key is D Flat (the universal key of animals, American Indians say), the song writ on the ground fast-soulful.

You can sweep the lace, taste it, fling it at the sun and see sparklers. The little girls next door roll in it and make angels. You wear sunglasses indoors—the light is almost blinding. Even the dark is light.

I once did an artist-in-residence at a Catholic college in Iowa. It was Valentine’s Day, three below zero. Sister Marie took me for a walk through a cemetery, stopping and telling stories about all the nuns that were buried there. She paused at an empty space and said excitedly: “This is where I will sleep.” She jumped up and down in the snow, so thrilled she was.

‘Sister walks on lace and sleep,’ I wrote back in Chicago. ‘Sister dances.’

Only the living see death. Only the universe knows what comes next. Only the ten viginsextillion atoms of deep space sing a song beyond the wolf’s ability to hear.

I was driving home for Christmas one year, Chicago to Alton. A blizzard was underway, and I was driving a VW Beetle, my only luggage a basket of dirty laundry as a Christmas present for my stepmother. Near Joliet, the car came to a stop in a snow bank which filled the highway.

After an hour, the car ran out of gas. I piled all my laundry around me. “This is where I will sleep,” I thought. And I did sleep, but not the big sleep I thought was coming. I woke up later in the night, hearing the tapping of a flashlight, against the passenger-side window. I was half frozen.

A woman state trooper climbed in beside me. She pulled off her gloves, removed my shoes and put my feet against her crotch. She massaged the dead feet and talked calmly, like it was a summer day on the river. Feeling slowly returned, and I was conscious of her pubic bone pressing against my feet.

A Greyhound bus approached. It was full of stranded people. The trooper helped me shoe up and board the bus. She told me where my car would be towed. Half the other passengers had whiskey bottles in their hands, and they passed the bottles until we got to a motel. It was the quietest night I can remember.

There is a weight to lace. It can be heavy, comforter-thick and dangerous. And it can be as light as a ballerina on one toe—which is how it is this morning, and the bare trees are upside down dancers. And the peppered field has cleared, and the hawk hunts elsewhere.

And a new scene presents itself.

February 4, 2016

Officials in Bolinas, California are reporting that coyotes are confronting motorists on local highways, blocking the roads and acting seemingly unafraid. The coyotes sit and stare, according to witnesses; then they trot around the cars and sniff them before they take off.

What is causing this behavior? Hallucinogenic mushrooms growing wild in the area. The coyotes, the lucky dogs, are high as kites, higher even, and they demonstrate remarkable interest in humans.

At the risk of shocking my former students, I will admit that I used to “do” magic shrooms. I quite enjoyed the experience—except for one night when I was walking home, and I passed some concrete gargoyles on a brick wall, and the gargoyles broke free and chased me down the street.

I recall being at a party and trying to talk to a comely lass, me stoned. We were sitting on a bed, just for a place to sit—you know. Unfortunately, just as we seemed to be on the verge of bonding, the walls of the room started melting. The wooden doors turned to a mudslide. And the girl’s face, which I was studying intensely, became a Picasso—a walking Picasso, to be sure—as she left the room.

So I walked outside in the front yard and began tracing the rectangles of sod and talking to the grass, which was singing “Ode to Joy.” There was a small airfield across the street. I and some other shroomed folk walked onto the runway and lay down. The occasional Cessna landed, wings flapping like very large birds.

So I understand the coyote phenomenon: Been there, done that. I phoned the Bolinas authorities and explained that I was an expert on magic mushrooms, and that if they invited me I would fly out there, take some shrooms and talk to the coyotes. Heck, I’d even talk to the rattlesnakes. (“If I could talk to the animals. . .”) I’m waiting to hear from them.

The language of drugs, hallucinogenic ones at least, is an anti language. “Just say no” translates to Yes, yes, over here! “Don’t do drugs” means I’ll do them so you don’t have to. In the cause of scientific inquiry, I’ve nibbled peyote buttons and danced naked around campfires with Indians, taken a Whitman’s sampler of LSD and flown myself with winged arms over the OrganMountains in New Mexico, without a net, and shape-shifted into Coyote the Trickster, the guardian of the moon.

I’m still here—or I was. Heck, the drug taking was when I was twenty-something. I sort of miss it—the insights of it and the sheer beauty. If someone knocked on the door of Genehouse and offered me a shroom, Jehovah’s Stoned Witnesses say, I’d be open to it. Otherwise I’ll drink red wine and remain calm.

DON’T DO DRUGS, PEOPLE (FORMER STUDENTS, THIS MEANS YOU)—unless you’re a roid-raged Republican in which case you need all the help you get. Marco Rubio on shrooms: “Dudes, you’re melting, you’re a melting pot, you’re pot, you’re cool, you’re tres cool, vote for. . . what’s my name? Marco? Polo!”

Here, Coyote, Coyote, here, boy, come to Daddy.

January 21, 2016

Dear Sarah Palin,

It has been tough sledding for the Obamacare Death Panel ever since you revealed our existence several years ago. Why, senior citizens started getting in shape, taking conceal carry gun training, running in 5K races, lifting weights and the like. We weren’t able to catch enough of them to justify our program.

Therefore, we have changed our mission. As of last month, our new Obamacare panel, “Dumbass Are Us, Dawg,” was launched. We programmed a supercomputer to identify dumbass Americans and sort them into categories: Mildly Dumbass, Can’t Help It Dumbass, Truly Dumbass, and Oh So Dumbass. Only the Oh So Dumbass will be, uh, tortured by being held in Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s black ops site and forced to watch Spanish language programs until their eyes pop out.

The Mildly Dumbass group is composed mostly of politicians and school principals of all stripes. Can’t Help It Dumbass covers your incompetents, your hustlers and hucksters, the liberal media, Reverend Al Sharpton, and such. Truly Dumbass is reserved for Ted Cruz anything, reality TV show creators, Honey Boo Boo’s mother Mrs. Boo, “Sexy Bill” Clinton, and that Kentucky court homophobe “Sexy Kim-what’s-her-face.”

Mrs. Palin, you are the only person our computer has categorized as Oh So Dumbass. Subsequently, we will be knock-knock knocking on Sarah’s door any day now. This gives you a chance to settle your affairs—if you know what I mean.

(We noticed that in your yesterday’s appearance with Donald Trump, Mr. Trump put his hand on your rump. He claimed he was reaching for your mouth.)

The computer took note of your phrase “hopey changey,” which you used in the sentence, “Hey, Obama is leavin’ town and takin’ his hopey changey with him, and here comes Donald Trump to kick some ass!” We watched Mr. Trump’s face turn red as he slowly came to Aristotelian recognition that you are dumber than a wood knot, and he moved his gaze away from your rump to the sky.

And that is the deal breaker, Mrs. Palin: Donald Trump thinks you’re an Oh So Dumbass.

While you were away from your home speechifying, we sent black helicopters to your compound in Alaska and removed your AK-47s, your bazookas, your Glocks and Colts and shotguns and .45s and derringers. We worried that your neighbors would call 911, but in fact they helped us take your weapons.

So, Mrs. P.: Make peace with your Maker. Don’t bother looking for your piece. Kiss those oversexed, naughty kids of yours goodbye. Take some Spanish lessons—don’t hire Mexicans! See you soon!

Sincerely,

Brittany Spears Mint

Former Director, Seniors: Adios Lazy Shriveled Atrophying Asses (SALSAA)

Director:  Obamacare Dumbass Are Us, Dawg (DAUG)

January 20, 2016

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch (no, I’m not joking), Senator Ted Cruz has a TV commercial coming out for this weekend’s NFL games. The Tedster is shown in a Louisiana duck blind, his face smeared with black greasepaint, and a shotgun pointed upward. At his side is the King of the Fake Hillbillies, Phil Robertson. Ted ejaculates—I mean shoots—but we don’t know if he hits anything. (Actually, he hits my heart.) And Phil says, “You’re one of us, my man.”

This gave me an idea, about other manly scenes Ted might want to shoot (no pun intended; bear with me).

Scene from “The Revenant”: Ted Cruz, inserted in place of Leonardo Dicaprio, in a frontiersman outfit and a flintlock rife, slogs through snow. Suddenly, a grizzly bear charges at him. Ted mugs for the camera, turns to the bear and says, “Hey there, I’m Ted! Teddy Bear. Me bear, too!”

The bear, perhaps confused, stops in its tracks. “I am running for President of this here national park. I want to take back this national park and make it a business park! I want good, decent oil and gas men to rid you and your forest buddies of all that smelly stuff in the ground, and hey, you got too many trees. Let’s thin it out some—what you say?”

The bear eats him head first. The bear’s wife and kids start feeding on Senator Cruz. Her husband says, “He is one of us, this man.”

Scene from “They Died with Their Boots On.” Ted Cruz, inserted in place of Errol Flynn as George Armstrong Custer, standing alone, his fellow cavalry comrades dead all around him. As the Indians charge at him, Ted throws down his pistol, smiles and says, “I come in peace!”

The Indians, perhaps confused, stop and listen. “Hey, guys, y’all Native Americans, I am for free enterprise, just like you! And you guys: look at you, all healthy and tanned; you don’t need no friggin’ Obamacare! Hey, sorry for all these feisty white guys around me. I was just following orders. What say we have a meal together?”

The Indians shoot him full of arrows, cut out his heart and eat it, with a nice Chianti and some pinto beans. The braves chant, “He is one of us!”

He is one of us—albeit from a branch of evolution that produced morons, jackasses, sapheads, idiots, cuckoos, witlings, clods, addleheads, loons, fools, cretins, boobies, dotards and old zombie-eyes Michelle Bachmann.

“Ted Cruz: He’s a trashy, demagogic sumbitch, but he’s MY trashy, demagogic sumbitch. I am Eugene Baldwin, and I approved of this message.”

January 19, 2016

“The Revenant,” based on the true story of Hugh Glass, an 1820’s tracker and hunter in the Northwest Territory, is a frightening yet uplifting and visually stunning film by director Alejandro Inarritu, another masterpiece for the artist who created last year’s “Birdman” as well as “21 Grams,” “Babel,” and “Amores Perros.”

Glass, accompanied by his young Pawnee Indian son Hawk (they have lost a wife and mother to a massacre by French fur traders) lead a hunting party of soldiers from a fort along the Missouri River in the Northwest Territory. The party is attacked by Indians who are searching for a stolen daughter of the tribe. Their escape and journey back to the fort is a nightmare of terror, bitter winter and hunger. Ultimately, the men turn on each other.

Glass, out scouting ahead of the troops, is nearly mauled to death by a grizzly bear. When the men discover him partially-eaten but alive, Hawk and two troopers, a psychopath named Fitzgerald and a young Jim Bridger (Will Poulter and the master actor Tom Hardy), are assigned to stay with Glass until he dies. In short order Fitzgerald murders Hawk, leaves Glass for dead and bullies Bridger into leaving the scene.

Glass survives and endures unspeakable hardships, ultimately saved by a Pawnee Indian. And since this depicts the heart of darkness, one would be hard pressed to become emotionally attached any character in this film.

This is how the West must have been, not the set of “clean” John Wayne movies with archetypes of noble, God-fearing white people rather than real characters, but depraved Europeans wantonly slaughtering Indians and animals. This film depicts our national character, which is with us to this day.

There is an unforgettable image of the Pawnee who saved Glass, hanging from a tree with a wooden sign around his neck which reads: “Savage.” While nearby, the French fur trappers who killed the man, drunkenly rape Indian women, play fiddle music and dance.

The photography of “The Revenant” is beyond beautiful, depicting Edenic scenes of wilderness and waterfalls and frozen landscape. The winter snow scenes had to be shot in Argentina, as there was no snow in South Dakota and Montana during the filming. (I wish I had seen the film on a much larger screen.) The scenery is as overwhelming as outer space, as viewing the Milky Way on a dark night. One is awestruck, only to be drawn back to the savage people, the chaos and the horror, and the abject cruelty.

A woman sitting in front of me laughed through the entire film. I asked her why. “It’s not real,” was the response.

This morning, I went to get coffee. It was fifteen degrees. As I was leaving my house, thinking of Hugh Glass naked in the frozen Missouri River, I threw off my coat and drove off. My hands and feet were numb by the time I got home.  We have evolved to jelly, to softness of body but fully retaining the memory of our dark past.

Watching this film, one knows with certainty that God, if that deity exists, did not create humans in its image. Or: God is a savage and horrifying truth.

Paradoxically, “The Revenant” is a great work of art, a purely human construct. Yet: there are no lessons to be learned. There is the truth, and the truth will not set us free.

January 12, 2016

To Commander in Chief Barack Obama: Sir, please call out our troops and oust those crackers disguised as cowboys, the Naïve Americans, from the Oregon facility. If they feel the need to go down with guns blazing, so be it.

Sir, the only reason you would coddle such DNA defectives is fear. You are black, and you know what the reaction would be. So to make you feel better, I and my friends, liberals and conservatives alike, loyal Americans as opposed to Naïve Americans, pledge to back you. We cannot tolerate mental defectives and hate mongers, holding us hostage as a nation.

A group of Native Americans held a press conference and asked the question: What would happen if WE took over Federal lands? Heck, what would happen if armed African Americans took over a compound and stared out at the cameras? In the name of equality for all, arrest and detain these Naïve Americans now.

Naïve Americans are the last holdouts of the Civil War, said in history books to have ended in 1865. The fact that their ancestors lost that war doesn’t matter. The fact that brave Union soldiers defeated them soundly doesn’t matter. The fact that elite Southern generals used these defectives as pawns doesn’t matter. They are still pawns, now being played by 5^th grade playground bully Donald Trump, the antichrist Ted Cruz, and Marco Rube. Let all Naïve Americans gather together in Oregon and face a real army, not the imaginary Southern one (and dead one) they worship and adore.

Federal lands aren’t so much managed as they are empty and neglected. The Naïve Americans illegally graze their cattle on these lands and exterminate native wolves and coyotes and birds and reptiles with poison, to promote grassland which should be desert. They dig wells and cattle troughs and threaten hikers and tourists. Federal lands belong to all Americans but they are systematically raped by those noble men holed up in Oregon.

Say the word, President Obama. Force the rats out of the sewers into the light of day. Let them blink in discomfort at the light of liberty. Let your might and just cause make them tremble, and let High Noon commence. It was going to anyway—unless the Naïve Americans wear no Marlborough Man clothes and are all bombast.

God blast the Naïve Americans.