Friday, February 25, 2011

Chapter 2: Horseshoeing School or...Denial Part IV



Somehow I imagined that horseshoeing went something like this. Hang around with nice looking women, eat a little watermelon, do most of the work with one hand and a slightly insincere smile. Or is it a lecherous grin? They kind of look similar.


However, truth and reality often change places, mostly because one is always more painful than the other. What I got was...


"[On the first] Friday of the class, we started working on the frozen legs. We wrapped the bloody parts in burlap and tied a string to one end. The other end was tied to a post so we could hold the leg between our legs, which sort of imitated real life conditions. Those of us with money had a heavy leather apron, those without, bloody jeans."


[We did get some real horses to work on eventually. Maggots had eaten most of the dead legs anyway.] "There were three horses and all were caked with mud or manure or both. Two immediately pissed on our dirt floor, turning in into a kind of foamy mud with little steam vents next to each submerged leg. This made it a little hard to determine [the instructor's] interpretation of proper balance -- or maybe in this case, flotation."
It took another five years for things to improve much.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Our Staff at Red Planet Publishing


This photo was taken during our 'Fundamentalist Period.' Shortly thereafter, we heard about Islam's no alcohol rule. Well, to be honest, that was a toughie at the time. We flipped a coin and became Lutherans.
That lasted about a week. On further examination it appeared that Lutherans were allowed to dabble in the spirits, but as a general rule they were too normal, awkward at parties and most of them seemed to live in Minnesota.
Next we tried Catholicism. The red wine was a nice touch, though both of us experienced difficulty with the part about when you kneel and when you stand. Both of us have pretty bad knees (horseshoeing does that to a person) so we would just drink more wine. After a bit, we just decided to lie down in the pew and hope for divine intervention, or the room to quit spinning. We weren't excommunicated -- more like a situation where the priest rejects your application because it is so much easier than listening to your confession -- which is just about as long as my book and not nearly as funny. Well, there was that part about the three tattooed women at the car wash...
Did I say the book was fiction? Good. Wouldn't want any misunderstandings here.