Phineas the All-Knowing

My dog looks at me.

He's not just looking—his expression indicates he's trying to communicate something important.

Finn is a brown and white terrier mix. He's low-maintenance and handsome. The black fur rimming his eyes gives the illusion he's wearing eyeliner. He has the most human eyes of any dog I've ever owned. They make him appear contemplative. Shortly after seven p.m., when I beckon him to my lap and scratch his neck, the staring begins. He didn't use to do this with such intensity. It's been six years since we rescued him, and this is a recent behavior. I'll be sitting there watching Paranormal Caught on Camera, with my pet studying my face in silence even after I look away from him. It's almost like he becomes a different dog; like he won't answer to his nickname anymore. In these moments he goes by Phineas, his legal name on the adoption papers. This Phineas knows all. And Phineas the All-Knowing has something to say.

He wants to say it. His stare is so intense it's like a yearning ache. He would speak human words if only his mouth and tongue could form them. I have no doubt. But he doesn't speak, and despite his human-like eyes I can't read his expression. I can only guess at his psychic message.

The first guess I had after the new behavior began, was that he was trained as a disease-detecting dog as a puppy. There are German Shepherds and Golden Retrievers who can sniff out diabetes and cancer. But I don't think that applies to my Phineas. He previously belonged to an owner in Kentucky who named him fucking "Pokemon" and didn't bother teaching him anything.

So no, he's not detecting an illness in my cells. That's not what he needs to tell me. Phineas the All-Knowing wears an expression of supreme importance. The knowledge he needs to drop involves something much bigger than me. It's meant for all of humanity.

This morning I figured it out. I now understand his message of crucial importance.

"Stop watching Paranormal Caught on Camera because the videos are fake."

Tonight at seven o'clock I'll look him straight in the eye and say, "I can't make that promise, Finnie. Now let me skritch your belly."

Albie - Part I

A Bigfoot sighting in Colorado made the news earlier this week. The video, shot from a train, shows a large, hairy, bipedal creature lumbering across hilly terrain. It then hunkers down and tries to blend in with its surroundings—the same way I would if some jackass recorded me without my consent. (Yes, I'm saying if I were walking my dog and someone pointed a phone in my direction, I would squat behind a bush and wait for them to leave.)

Based on "evidence" presented on Reddit—whose users are never wrong—this was a hoax. They claim it's a man in a costume; allegedly someone from a nearby business that has "Sasquatch" in its name. This individual is known to suit up for passing trains. Although I'm sure that's normal behavior for the mountain folk of southwestern Colorado, I don't accept that theory.

I say it's a Bigfoot in a Bigfoot suit.

Full disclosure: has a Redditor beaten me to the punch on this theory already? Yes. Of course. There's always someone with less of a life than you or I, ready and willing to chime in. But I came up with my version of it before seeing their post. And I take it much further. It's what I do.

This particular Bigfoot is unique. He's the Albert Einstein and Neil Armstrong of their species all rolled into one. He has to be. He's an Alpha Bigfoot. "Albie," as I'll call him, watched from the woods every time the owner of that business got into his costume. He saw him waiting for an approaching train, dashing out onto the hillside, and bounding around in the hopes someone had a camera pointed at him. "This fucking guy," Albie grunted in his language. "He's drawing attention to me and my kin, and something's gotta be done."

To be continued…

Lies of the Pillow People

The Pillow People reside in my living room. They're always there, but they don't move. They awaken from hibernation three or four times a year, and even then only when two conditions are met.

The first occurs when blue moonlight shines through the front window and hits them at just the right angle. It provides these unholy monstrosities with the lunar sustenance they require to animate their mouths.

The second condition occurs when my wife serves as their Dr. Frankenstein by straightening the room, and setting each face pillow atop the couch with a pair of larger torso pillows below them.

These soft beings with their quilted patterns bear the faces of my son and daughter from their younger years. Boy Pillow Person's head is a photo of my eight-year-old son's face, and Girl Pillow Person's head is my daughter in kindergarten. I'm not tricked by their pleasant smiles.

They sit there, side by side, waiting patiently for me to trudge downstairs in the wee hours. I prefer not to engage them because, upon getting my attention, they speak in voices that sound, respectively, like Peter Dinklage talking in an Australian accent and Robin Williams doing Mrs. Doubtfire. It's disturbing.

"Call us Boy Pee-Pee and Girl Pee-Pee when you write about us," says Boy Pillow Person.

"If you don't, you're a wicked monkey."

"Leave me alone," I tell them, and hurry down the hallway.

They can't follow because they have no limbs. But until I get my headphones on and start writing, I hear their taunts from the other room.

"Be nice to us, by crikey, or we won't throw ourselves underneath you when you inevitably trip down the stairs."

"We shan't protect your head, poppet."

"Neither of you can move on your own," I call back. "So I know you're lying. If I fall down the stairs there's nothing you can do but watch. The joke's on you."

"We love you," they chorus. "Come in here and let us hug you."

"You have no arms," I say. "I'm putting on my headphones now. La-la-la-la, I can't hear you…"

Sooner or later my dogs jump onto the couch and scatter their parts, and I don't have to listen to their lies for another few months.

Linda and Her Cheese Fries

While sitting in a drive-thru, I had a spare moment to deal with a nagging hangnail. I snipped it off with clippers, accepted my medium-sized cup of Dunkin awesomeness, and realized I had a bloody fingertip.

I got home and dug through our bathroom cabinets. Not wanting to waste a whole bandage, I used that product where you brush a clear, strong-smelling liquid onto your wound that stings like hell. Once it dries, you've essentially applied a tiny layer of artificial skin to your actual skin. Since it dries clear, however, you can still see your red, pulsing wound. It made me wonder why they went with the see-through option.

It also made me realize science is already improving artificial skin.

Some brainiac in a lab coat is probably spraying a thick mist onto a human test subject's open sore right now. The dermi-bots are swarming the infected area, stitching skin at a cellular level…until something goes wrong with their programming. They've restored the subject's epidermis to factory conditions, but their sensors decide the acne on his back is a naturally occurring condition. Red, bumpy pustules appear on Patient Zero's wound and his bacne spreads, covering his entire body within minutes. He reaches frantically for the scientist, infecting him with replicating bots.

The military tries to seal the lab to stop the spread, but it's too late. Goddamned Linda at reception has impatiently touched the DoorDash guy's hand reaching for her cheese fries—because everyone in the secret mountain facility knows about goddamned Linda and her goddamned cheese fries intake—and off he goes in his Corolla to officially kick-start the Acne-pocalypse of 2023.

Many Curses Upon Reddit

If you're able to get up in the middle of the night and pee in a dark bathroom, I offer my sincere and utmost respect.

You are a much braver soul than I. You are the alpha tribal chieftain and I am the cowering, craven cur awaiting tossed scraps of meat as you regale us with tales of the day's mammoth hunt. You sit without fear upon your throne in the hours 'twixt madness and sanity, and I'm here to salute you.

How I wish I'd never read that most black widow bites occur on men's scrotums while they sat on a toilet. And I often ask myself why I ever watched those clips of friendly brown rats waiting to say, "Ho there!" when the lid is lifted. While I'm voicing regrets, many curses upon Reddit for ever showing me a coiled viper chilling inside a porcelain bowl.

But please, alpha human, don't let my need to turn on the lights first dissuade you from your brave, nightly endeavors.

You do you, chief.

May You Have a Delicious New Year

My wife decided to brew her own kombucha. In order to do this, she needed to purchase a SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). Amazon delivered a microbial mat, or pellicle, which are fancy words for "gelatinous wad of phlegm that ferments in a jar."

I was sitting there one day, minding my own business, when she approached me with something in her cupped hands. "Say hello to our baby SCOBY!" she said, explaining that some people talk to them.

The problem is, I'm not some people. I jerked my head away from the flesh-colored glob and told her, "I'm not doing that."

She did do that, however, and welcomed it to our home.

A few weeks later, walking through the kitchen, I heard a tiny voice from inside a large glass jar on top of the refrigerator. "Let me out, papá," the SCOBY infant said, "for my juices are now ready."

My wife's not into the occult, but she'd unwittingly created a golem. I groaned, "Oh, goddammit, my wife's a tulpamancer."

There was a time when I wouldn't talk to it. Now at the end of 2022 I'm asking to drink the SCOBY's brown excretions. I hear it giggling as it makes more.

Happy New Year, li'l golem.

41,610 Times

Oh, I'mma fall on those stairs.

It's not a question of "if," it's a question of "when."

It'll happen because the law of averages is a cold, cruel tyrant.

I've lived in this house nineteen years. I have to go up those stairs because that's where my bedroom is. I have to go down those stairs because that's where the coffee is. Counting bedtime, I risk that trip at least three times a day. Total all that up and we're talking 41,610 chances of serious injury and counting.

I'm not saying I haven't tripped on an ascent or two. I've even done it with a mug of java in my hand and managed to not spill the whole thing. You can still see faded brown spots on the carpeting. But the dangerous one is the descent.

I could screw up and misjudge the number of stairs toward the bottom because I'm feeling all cocky, just smirking and thinking, I got this. Or it could happen right at the top step on a morning after I've decided, Yeah, I don't even need to hold the railing today because I'm a grown-ass man.

Oh, I'mma fall on those stairs for sure.

When it happens, it'll happen fast. I'll barely have time to cry out before I'm knee-deep in that shit. My wife's statement to the police will be, "I heard him scream, 'Oh, no!' and then a series of thunks and thumps before it was quiet again." And if the cop asks why she didn't check on me, her reply will be, "I went back to sleep because I thought it was a dream. My husband had navigated those stairs 41,610 times over nineteen years. He was always so sure-footed. I believed in him. But I was sleepy, too."

And there I'd be: crumpled and twitching. Head facing the wrong way. Hoping my life hadn't been some boring version of The Truman Show. Because the producers would use this exact moment to put me in a Life Alert commercial. Have you seen those lately? They're horrific. They look like they're shot by James fucking Wan. You half expect a goddamned nun to zoom out of the background and put the old, moaning stair-faller out of their misery.

Oh, I'mma definitely fall on those stairs to help Life Alert scare the elderly.