Michael Kindt's Blog, page 143
March 11, 2015
While painting and rearranging my living room this past week, I...
While painting and rearranging my living room this past week, I realized that I have become a collector of kerosene lanterns. My Grandma Bonnie collected them and I remember one time when I was little she lit them all up at once and turned off all the lights. She had over 30 of them. I remember loving it, the intimacy of firelight. You don’t get that with electric light. Thirty years later and I have accumulated a dozen of them or so, without even consciously realizing it.
Therefore, I hereby declare myself a collector of kerosene lanterns, because, when I grow up, I wanna be just like Grandma Bonnie.
March 10, 2015
Posted Earlier
New story. You won’t like it. But, for the night people: CLICK
Oh, I forgot to say, Story Time!
Layoffs Affect MTV, Other Networks, As Viacom Restructuring Continues
If MTV still exists at the end of this restructuring, then Viacom has not laid off enough workers.
Necrophiliac Mortician Elected Mayor of Really Weird Town
Blodger, South Dakota, a town of about 5,000 people, is located about 80 miles north of Platte in Charles Mix County. It’s right on the edge of Dutch Country. Further south of Blodger, everybody’s named Van der This and Van der That. North of Blodger, where the normal people are, was where my Grandma Bonnie came from. She was Irish, last name of Floyd, and didn’t care for the Dutchies, with their tulips and windmills and edams and goudas. I remember her singing a song when I was a little kid: “There’s the Amsterdam Dutch and the Rotterdam Dutch, but they’re all the Goddamn Dutch.” Something like that.
You would think people out on the prairie wouldn’t have time for such shit, what with haying to do and winter coming on, but, apparently, you’d be wrong. Sitting here now, an adult man (numerically speaking), I can’t help but imagine riots breaking out over the grasslands, the Irish and Germans on one side, and the Dutch on the other. I imagine the Irish all drunk and poetic and not much help at all, while the Germans beat the Dutch with bratwurst, who, in turn, kick back at them with wooden clogs.
Grandma always told me I had a hell of an imagination.
In Blodger, in 2006, the town’s only mortician was indicted by a grand jury on several charges of “mishandling a corpse”. Back then, that was the only crime they could charge him with because it had never occurred to anyone in our state capital, Pierre (pronounced ‘peer’), to outlaw having sex with dead people. It just didn’t register with us simple country folk. If you think about it, “mishandling a corpse” is pretty vague. What if the pallbearers were all drunk and dropped the casket? If you’ve ever been to an Irish wake, you know it could totally happen.
His indictment was big news here in the state, but nowhere else. Most people in America aren’t even aware that we are a state. You know when you’re trying to remember all 50 states but can only come up with 49? That’s where South Dakota comes in.
Mort Prochnow was the indicted mortician’s name, and I’m not even kidding. He was 51 years old in 2006. I don’t remember the details of his bust, but it was something about the funeral home maintenance man walking in on something terrible. An investigation and interrogation ensued, and Prochnow ended up admitting to having sex with several different corpses over the years. “More than a few dozen,” the newspapers said. Additionally, if your deceased loved one was a young attractive female, Prochnow would even offer a 25% discount if you had her “preparation” done there in Blodger, by him, rather than haul her up to Mitchell or down to Platte.
He did four years in the state mental institution at Heitzel and when he got out in 2011, he needed a new line of work because he was also barred from ever practicing mortuary science again. Naturally, he thought of politics. In November of 2012, he was elected to the town council of Blodger.
This is not as surprising as it may seem on the surface, for Mort Prochnow has always been well-liked around town. He has lived there since the Reagan years, volunteers variously and voluminously, is active in his church, and though a lifelong bachelor (surprise), doesn’t come off as gay, due to having dated several Blodger women over the years. None of his relationships ever took hold, however, because as Prochnow once told a friend, he finds most women “too animated”. In fact, many people in Blodger feel he has been railroaded, feel the maintenance man wasn’t trustworthy (his last name was Van der Smet), feel the confession was coerced, and so on.
On Valentine’s Day this year, Blodger’s previous mayor, Tom Cavanaugh, died unexpectedly when his wife caught him with another woman and shot him in the face with a .22. A special election was called to replace him and today, a little over an hour ago, Mort Prochnow, convicted and admitted necrophiliac, was declared the winner. This evening at 7 pm local time, he will be sworn in as the 81st mayor of Blodger, South Dakota.
Now, in the title I said Blodger was a really weird town, but I don’t know that for sure. I’ve never been there and pretty much stay away from the eastern side of the state due to the fact that they’re all a bunch of fucking whack jobs over there. I was assuming. After all, the town elected a necrophiliac as its mayor. How can it not be really weird?
From what I gather, Prochnow has lived a pretty normal life since being released from the mental institution. He sold his modest two-bedroom house and moved into an apartment. He started a handyman and landscaping service. Though he is barred from coming within 500 feet of any funeral home, kind of like how child molesters are barred from coming within 500 feet of schools, he can often be seen around the Blodger Cemetery, usually about dusk, and carrying a shovel.
They are still improving cheese. This boggles my mind. Cheese is...
They are still improving cheese. This boggles my mind. Cheese is perfect: creamy, coagulated heaven. Yet there are people sitting around going “How can we make it even better?”
They may as well be adding room to outer space.
At what point will they say, “I think we’re done here”? When the minute I take a bite of it my eyes roll back, I cum in my jeans, and then tip over in a faint?
One person’s traitor is another person’s patriot
Reading about all the dastardly “treasonous” Republicans in Congress. Propaganda machines are saying they are “going behind Obama’s back” on the whole Iran thing, trying to sabotage Obama’s deal. The Logan Act was cited—which doesn’t ban members of Congress from talking to foreign leaders (or inviting them to speak). It doesn’t because, um, hello, members of Congress are also the government.
The Obama Administration is not the only government thing in the government. He’s not King Barack or anything. He’s just an elected douchebag, just like the elected douchebags in Congress.
In this, the Age of the President, when we have ceded so much power over to just one man, Congress’s role as ombudsman must not be forgotten.
Remember, only your opponent will hold you truly accountable for anything.
Things I need: Cravats & Bolo Ties
for an upcoming wedding.
I was taking out the garbage the other day and had an epiphany: I am never going to wear a standard tie ever again. A politician tie, I call it. Politicians and other men on tv with podia in front of them wear them. Such men I dislike intensely the vast majority of the time.
I was actually asked, half-jokingly, to perform the marriage (I am, believe it or not, an ordained minister, as per This is Eric. He’s Dead.), but refused as this seems to be a real wedding between largely normal people who love each other. Relatives, even. Well, one of them. Mockery of the holy union and all that.
I just watched a youtube video on how to tie a cravat and got a slight erection, so neat was it. The youtuber then showed how to tie a bowtie and I clicked away. Not a bowtie guy. Too quirky.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m as quirky as they come, but I don’t want to wear it around my neck like some sort of HELLO, I’M QUIRKY sign.
Maybe I’m not quirky. Maybe I’m just weird. I’m too much of an asshole to be quirky, I think.
Speaking of politicians, today is election day around here. Special vote on whether or not to expand our civic center. The arguments in favor: a larger civic center will help our community grow (maybe one day we can even have real slums!). Arguments against: too expensive.
I’m voting to no. I do not want my community to grow. Why do you think I live in South Dakota? Besides, it won’t grow. And it won’t attract any real talent, either. It’s not like we can get a decent rock and roll band here, even with a bigger civic center. And all the country that comes here sucks ass already—generic, modern, pop “Nashville” type country, the kind of country that is actually starting to rap now.
*shivers*
So not “no”, but “fuck no”.
Other than voting, I have no plans for today other than sitting around on the couch with a clear conscience.
March 9, 2015
"Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps."
- William Blake
