Neanderpundit

can be as powerful as pet names. You have to be careful how you assign them. And how they are assigned to you. Want to spend your career known as “handjob” or “lotion boy”? Anyway, we had this guy who went from the rank and file to become a shift forman, and his name was… phil. His last day, as he showered, he talked smack about how he was going to be in charge of the men he was shwoering with, and how he was going to have the upper hand the very next day. Most of the hourlies gaped in amazement at the sheer cheek of the guy, but as he left the shower room everyone waved their junk at him and one guy even went so far as to shout “Lick me, Phil”.

And there it was.

His hardhat, (now white instead of the normal red) sprouted a new hand lettered legend the same day: “Lick me, Phil”. The sign on the shop door now said “Hard hat area. Do not enter unless you Lick me, Phil”. The shop truck sported a handmade license plate which read “LIKMEFIL” Someone even had jacket patches embroidered that said “Lick me, Phil” in beautiful script. The crowning glory was a Whiteco-Metrocom billboard that said ‘Lick me, Phil” in letters twelve feet high.

Phil eventually hit the road for parts unknown. Sometimes, hanging out in places where steelworkers used to, I find a scrawl in a crapper or a scratch on a table in crabbed, pocketknife script “Lick me, phil”. And I smile, remembering a man who lost control of the situation and assigned himself a nickname that would flavor his life until he moved away.

I do a certain amount of buying and seling on ebay. I do surf the bay a lot, just because there are always wierdnesses out there, like the kid who was selling one of his nuts. So here’s a list of things that you might find you cannot live without:

Seaweed
Lucky air
an Embalming machine

A Head Hole Cleaner

Possibly the dumbest thing I have ever seen

And finally, Crazy. Yes, you can buy your crazy right here.

When I was in seminary, Father John Basso would regale us with his stories of youth. He was a gentle old dago, who could really pour on the coals when he was pissed- most of the time, though, he’d tell these parables. Most of them were pretty damned good.

Anyway, he talked about screwdrivers once. He was using a rusty old pocketknife from his desk drawer to remove a screw from the temple of his eyeglasses, while we read quietly in Latin. He talked about a man in the town where he grew up, a man most thought of as a drunk and a fool. At one point or another, everyone in town had given him money for booze, or picked him out of the gutter, or bailed him out of jail. Everyone in town would say to themselves- or each other- Don’t drink too much, or get in too much trouble, you’ll end up like Louis.

All the preaching the Priest in town did from the pulpit could never have had the effect of guiding the townspeople towards temperance than old Louis. And so, Fr John said, in the hands of the Creator, even a poor, bad tool can be used. With that he put his newly tightened glasses back on his head, and made us conjugate latin verbs till we all hated breathing.