Rednexx & Th' Sweatin' Man: ... And Make Tombs of Your Cities!

This probably needs kind of a warning, just to spare myself an "intervention" or something.

Occasionally I like to just spout terrible, absurd wordplay that probably only I think is funny, and one of those times has arrived.

What follows are a few chapters from a never-ending, plotless, damnably stupid novel I sometimes work on, and which everyone who's ever been subjected to it seems to absolutely hate, even if they love my other stuff. I think it makes 'em uncomfortable, which makes it seem even funnier to me. I hope ya'll will like it, but if you don't it won't surprise me or hurt my feelings. I'll probably do it again even without encouragement, because it cracks me up.

The basic premise is a redneck couple in Buttdimple, Mississippi is visited by a large, miserable, inarticulate Sweatin' Man, presumably forever. George-Bob is very stupid but busy; he likes to do things. Sally-Lou is perhaps slightly smarter and very pretty, if you really want to believe what you're told, which isn't a thing I ever advise ye do. You can arrange the chapters in any order you want, it makes no difference. The titles are unrelated to the content; if they are, then it's only because I fucked up. If it confuses you, fear not, that's exactly what insanity is supposed to do. Don't try to make sense of it, there is none. I'm just trying to write a Rorschach blot. Find the butterfly, or find the puppies fuckin' the chipmunk, it's all in what ya bring wit'cha.

It's not literature, it's tequila. And you should slam it and then eat the worm if you mess with it at all.

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CHAPTER 47: IT'S BETTER TO GET THE KIND OF DOG THAT HAS A MOUTH.

When the phone rang this time it was crazy ol' Mr. Babyshark from down 'cross the way there, in that house with the lean to it and the babydolls in the trees. Who knew that ol’ rattleskulled ol’ cuss even had a phone? We do, now, I suppose. Congratulations, us!

"WELL HOWDY-DO!" screamed George-Bob into the phone, thinking it was deaf ol' Mr. Picklecheese instead.

"Who makin' that ol' dookiesmell, yew whore-eyed whapdookus?" replied Mr. Babyshark, who was as crazy as Sally-Lou was pretty. He grumbled when he talked, like a dead man's belly digesting itself.

"What's that you say?" said George-Bob, said he.

"I'm Delbert Simpkin's mama if I'm a day old!" declared Mr. Babyshark. "Comin' round there later to kick myself a fine doghouse out of yer wizened ol’ windhole! That’s my aim, bank on it, Melvin!”

“Perhaps you have the wrong number,” said George-Bob, as his mama always said when he called her.

“Jezebel! I shall fricassee up a breakfast of your descendents, none of whom could bear to wear a pair o’ britches for longer time than it takes to boil an owl! You think I ain’t aware of the ceremonies takin’ place at yore farm? Yew an’ that unholy chocolate-hot-dog-cult yew been presidin‘ o‘er? I seen it with mah own three testiculars! The wind tells me of abominations and a choir of sores! By the fat of mah taint I’ll see the end of this or mah name ain’t whateverthehell!”

“Mr. Babyshark,” said George-Bob helpfully. Or it would have been helpful had he been dealing with a sane man.

“My name is Cum!” insisted Mr. Babyshark or whateverthehell. “Don’t wear it out ‘less you got a coupon what says you can do such, you fuzzy tit-eyed malfeasant!”

“Certainly so,” replied George-Bob, who had no idea what a malfeasant was, and only a vague notion of a coupon, either. You have to remember, George-Bob was a fellow who’d never even been to Shreveport.

“Yew got that ol’ Sweatin’ Man visitin’ with ye! Him who ravished mah woodshed of Thursday last! Semen and hairy poo-chunks hung from the ceiling like the chandeliers of Midian’s ballroom! Looked ‘n’ smelt like Axl Rose his damnself had thrown a pantsless frolic for ol’ Beelzebub! My chicken don’t walk right and mah Ebbie-Sue still ain’t speakin’ German like I distinctly remember she used to though she denies it in her obstinance, the cess-fattened cheese-cuttin’ tornado-jockey!”

(Ebbie-Sue was Mr. Babyshark’s wife, although their marriage ceremony had been a long and incredibly frustrating chore that had left three dead. Mr. Babyshark’s previous wife had been a portable radio.)

“I don’t give a goddamn-hell, ah mean to have mah crackers, and I don’t care if I have to take all the screws out of your tractor and replace them with ones what I carved from the wood of a lynchin’ tree, are you hearin’ me, junior?”

“I’m hearin’ ya,” said George-Bob. The ol’ Sweatin’ Man and Sally-Lou looked askance at him, and he looked askance back, so they shrugged. Sally-Lou went back to gift-wrapping individual butterbeans.

“Speckled bedsheet unfurled in the wind, there came ol’ Grandpa Fuckyou, come to pay his disrespects right on mah porchswing! The gingerbread armies were on the march soon thereafter, and that is how the Battle of Steamboat Hill took place way back in 2017,” grumbled Mr. Babyshark. There was a wet smacking in the background, like a toothless man struggling with a corn-on-the-cob, but you can put that out of your mind, for it is of no consequence; I just thought you might like to know. “The devil’s just as happy shittin’ in yer pants as he is his own, and he don’t give three toots for the speed limit! You remember that if you don’t wanna be put in some sort of little metal box and I don’t know what happens to you after that, ‘cuz nobody does! That‘s devil-business, that is!”

“I’ll keep that at the foreskin of my mind,” promised George-Bob, meaning “forefront,” but isn’t it just as good? I’ll say! Let’s agree!

“The lawnmower! O Christ! I’ve told ol’ Festrunk Jones that walkin’ ‘round with a backpack full of cole slaw was a bad idea, but did he listen to me, NO, and was he eat-up by rats, YES! So just Martha Stewart the hell out of some of that with your sweet goody-hole, baby blue! Sit down, shut up, and fight fight fight!”

“I do believe it’s Tuesday,” said George-Bob, struggling to hold up his end.

“The reason you can’t get a decent two-by-four to fit anymore is because east is a whole lot more far-off than all the other directions. My pajamas ain’t got no zing to ‘em now, not since the muskrat was enthroned on the pinnacle of the Colossus!”

“Well I’ll be dipped in Minwax and damned for a so-and-so,” said George-Bob. His hair lay lank atop his head, like a pat from the hand of an affectionate dead man.

“The pissteats are back and swollen with want of milking! I can’t abide my wardrobe no longer, so I’ll make a mask from the skin of a chicken and do me a greasy kind of dance on the grave of a murdered clown. I declare I will!”

“You will, I betcha,” quoth George-Bob.

“Ah’m storin’ my shits in pickle jars on the shelves of WinnDixies all across this land and nobody’s none the wiser. All of ‘em sleepin’, them with their telephones and their spoons and yarn. My eyebrows are real interesting to think about, how salty they are.”

“I’ve found that to be true,” said George-Bob, rubbing at his own eyebrows and then licking his fingertips. Why, that was tripe, wasn’t it? With a hint of marmalade?

“Late at night I hear the needle scratchin’ at the end of the record in mah head, and I know I done run out of thinkin’. You got your work cut out for you if you plan to rape a porcupine, that’s what the man in the TV says. Not that I trust him. His skin is made out of French fries cleverly interwoven.”

“I never watch him,” said George-Bob, damned liar, he.

“There’s six germs in mah stomach and they don’t agree with each other. They were placed there by a possum-nurse under orders of the Illuminati. One day long before we’re ready they’ll emerge from my hindermost in the form of a butt-Cheeto that will rule the world and we’ll all be the sorrier!”

“That so?” George-Bob challenged.

“Yeah, so I just wanted to call to apologize. Bye!”

“Bye,” said George-Bob, hanging up.

“Who was that on the phone?” asked Sally-Lou.

“Oh, that was me,” said George-Bob.






CHAPTER 572: LEGENDS OF SOME OF THE LESSER COWBOYS

The clown had appeared on the horizon about noon and had come sailing in about thirty feet off the ground, floppy shoes a-floppin’ and ah-oo-gah horn a-ah-oo-gah-in’, a marvel to witness until the flak cannons brought him down. Smoking, fishtailing more than spiraling, he had smacked into the trailer’s front yard face-first, bounced once, and then landed on his back where he lay like a mangled sunbather who hadn’t found the beach. And there he lay, dead as Rudy Guiliani’s chances.

George-Bob, Sally-Lou, and th’ ol’ Sweatin’ Man himself all went out and gathered around the corpse and gazed upon it with a kind of wonder, for it wasn’t every day that a flying clown crashed into one’s yard. Indeed, sometimes a whole month would pass without this happening, fuckbuddy.

“He’s still kind of funny,” said Sally-Lou, pointing at the baggy pants, the wide orange polka-dot tie, the made-up ruin of a face behind a plastering of blood, gravel, loam, and abraded bone. One eye slipped from its socket and dangled next to the ear like a novelty Ipod ear-bud. It didn’t make a sound, but you can overdub “boy-yoy-yoing-g-g!” over it in your mind to soften the tragedy. Isn’t imagination kind to us when the lights are on?

“He makes me laugh,” said George-Bob offhandedly, hands in his pockets.

Th’ Sweatin’ Man merely watched, lost in thoughts of the bacon for which he had a hankerin’.

“Once I had a pet clown,” said Sally-Lou. “But I forgot to feed him, so he died. Not from starvation, though. He bled to death while trying to eat his other leg. I loved him a great deal, but apparently not enough to awaken any sense of responsibility in me. His name was called Mr. Funnybunny. Stephen Daniel Funnybunny. He was an ol’ shit when he was drunk. We left his moldy corpse in grandsister’s bed as a prank.”

“That makes me laugh,” said George-Bob listlessly as he leaned a bit to port.

Th’ Sweatin’ Man desired two eggs, no, three. Four, then.

“I like dancin’ dogs,” said Sally-Lou. “Charmin’, they is.”

“You can train a possum to suck on things,” announced George-Bob even though he probably shouldn’t’ve. “Only thing is, only certain possums will do it. Others will bite and hang on like the dickens. So, it ain’t worth the risk if you ask me.”

Th’ Sweatin’ Man decided if he could sharpen his elbows somehow, it might prove an aid in bringing down his prey, the might caribou.

The dead clown gave a twitch, then decay set in. Clowns go pretty quickly in this environment, as you well know, you with your Uncle Monty. Maggots began to swarm like spilled popcorn at the circus of the insipid. A buzzard swooped down and made off the clown’s liver, and George-Bob shook his fist at it, more for dramatic effect than anything else, as George-Bob had no real use for a clown-liver, anyway, if we’re too be at all honest, and in any case this one had been burst by the deadly aim of the Wehrmacht’s thundering 88’s.

“Well, I suppose we’ll need to have a funeral,” sighed Sally-Lou.

“Yes, I suppose that I suppose that as well,” George-Bob supposed.

And so they did have a funeral of sorts, except for th’ ol’ Sweatin’ Man, who went back inside because Hogan’s Heroes was on TV, and Hogan’s Heroes is some funny shit, boy.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: DRUNK-SLAPPIN’ IT OLD-SCHOOL THERE, CORNBREAD

“So I made a chocolate cake, and I iced it with deviled ham,” said George-Bob, wielding a spatula for emphasis. “Then there was a marvelous cheesecake, topped with asparagus spears.”

“Cheesecake gives me the wind,” said Sally-Lou. The very fussy Sally-Lou.

Th’ Sweatin’ Man thought how nice it’d be to have a bit of breeze, no matter how brief and foul and colon-born.

“I have a recipe for blueberry muffins, but with olives,” said George-Bob, then kissed his fingers and flicked them out in a gesture that said “magnifique” or something else suitably French. “And I could make us some moose-piss floats, but I don’t have any ice cream.”

“Once I almost ate a compact disc, because I forgot,” said Sally-Lou, phrasing it in the form of a complaint. Moody was she.

Th’ Sweatin’ Man fanned his face, thinking of Hades, of the desert, of a fat whore’s armpit gone unweeded.

“Around the end of May I always make my special sardine bread,” said George-Bob, gesturing with his spatula like a culinary semaphore. “Spread thick with my special pickle-strawberry frosting, it’s a thing to put in your mouth and challenge yourself with!”

“My father doesn’t understand the concept of TV dinners,” Sally-Lou griped, itching herself with vigor. “Once he ate most of a Zenith.”

Th’ Sweatin’ Man shifted, trying to ease his rash-filled buttcrack, without avail. It reminded him of an umbrella filled with fireants.

“Then there’s my cranberry potato salad, topped with rich cabbage gravy. With sticks of cinnamon pork-cheese for dipping, mmm-mmm! The only drawback is that it’ll give you the shits such that you’ll leave yellow spots on the moon!”

“The moon is my enemy,” Sally-Lou groused. She wanted enemies, it seemed, acting as she did. Spiteful thing, brazen stepchild!

Th’ Sweatin’ Man wished to be on the moon, enemy planet or not. There it would be cool, an atmosphere of frost that would act as balm to his tortured hide. The heat-bumps on his taint would resemble a Christless Sierra Madre.

“Housepaint can be a condiment,” said George-Bob, accidentally slapping his own face with the spatula, with startling force. “And cigar ashes make a fine seasoning. A chicken, stuffed with cigarettes, can be wrung out for a magnificent gravy, just like grandpa used to make when unattended. Also I am fond of my special San Jose peanut butter and jelly sandwich, where one uses slices of Spam instead of bread.”

“If I had a revolver, I’d use it,” snapped Sally-Lou. Her scowl was unbecoming on a face that was usually so pretty, damn her. It’d make you mad to see it.

Th’ Sweatin’ Man thought that if he had a revolver he’d fan himself with it. Maybe shoot a few holes in the walls, let a little breeze in. He waited for an opportunity to take off his pants.

“You can cover macaroni with pudding of your choice, though I recommend butterscotch,” said your best friend George-Bob, he of the spatula. “Pour over a mix of sirloin and trout, and, why, you’ll have something!”

“That’s what I’d like, something,” said Sally-Lou, though she said it with such venom that you’d have to doubt if she’d really like something, or anything else. Anger was her lot, and discontent besides. An attitude like hers you’d best toss in a wastebasket.

Th’ Sweatin’ Man wiped at his face with hands too sweaty to wipe away the sweat of his face; it was like trying to scrub a pond with a river. Under his man-teats you could bake a pie which none would have the fortitude to, subsequently, eat.

“Speaking of pie, you grease a pan with Turtle Wax, lay out your dough, pour in the corned beef and the apricots, top with a glaze of stewed ham in buttermilk, then cover with meringue and bake, and, mmm boy, you betcha!” said George-Bob, wild of eye. “Then you can go American-style and shovel on the cheese. Wash it down with high fructose corn syrup, deal with the aftermath by taking various pills, and die before our time. That’s how we roll, dawg! Woof woof!”

“Shit,” said Sally-Lou, the grump. Why was she being like this? Her demeanor was the sound of jackboots marching on gay Pairee, the Hell’s Angels crashing Altamont, the Ku Klux Klan throwing a bris.

Th’ Sweatin’ Man despaired of ever finding relief on this side of the grave. He whimpered. The environment was his dominatrix and he wasn’t into that.

“Did I ever tell you of my potatoes a’la Ex Lax?” asked George-Bob, and it was agreed that he had not and would not.

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More someday, probably. That's a threat!

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