Damien Galeone

It’s Sunday afternoon and to avoid doing any kind of work I elect to visit a local tavern for a couple of bowls of forget-everything juice. The pub we chose is in the middle of a park near our house. We sat on the back deck which has large windows that look out over a pond in the back. The pond is home to several ducks, some of which are babies. They scoot around the water and as long as you can’t see their feet paddling frantically beneath them, it’s mesmerizing.

One duck was curled into a ball of brown fur on the cement quay. His neck was curled back and his bill jutted from the little ball he had become. The sun was on him. He looked to be in utter comfort. This of course is when a little girl decided to come mess with him. She inched up and when the duck didn’t budge, she saw the prospective glory of direct interaction with the duck. She visibly held her breath. She sidled a few inches. My God, she thought, she was going to make it happen.

We’ve all been there. What child doesn’t want to play with furry wild animals, especially those which honk and swim? Ducks look harmless and they taste delicious. The most famous duck in the world only wears the top half of a sailor costume. How harmful can they be? The girl flattened her back so it was ramrod straight. She pressed her arms to her side. She gave a spot-on impression of a person inching along a wall except for the fact that the closest wall to her was the one I was leaning my elbow on thirty feet away. She slid one foot to her left and then brought the other one to it. She ignored her mother’s calls.   

When one has a bad day, one that never seems to end, they go to their comforts. Mine are complex carbohydrates and the antics of Phil Dunphy and family. When this proved ineffective – I ate too much and Phil was too wholesome. I felt like a devil.

Still in search of comfort, I went to the internet. The internet is a bad place filled with bad people. It’s currently ruled by an orange troll who – every 3 minutes for the last 8 years – has subjected humanity to his peculiar brand of abject stupidity cum incoherent rambling interlaced with lies that only a shoe might buy. So you can understand my wariness.  

I watched a GIF of a pretty girl winking at me, but this didn’t do what it seems to have been meant to do. I watched it over and over again from a plethora of women and at a number of speeds and yet, at the end of the winking, I was still bummed out. Seems the world falling apart at the seams and being overwhelmed at work can’t be fixed by a woman whose name I don’t know winking at a camera. Stop the presses.

I looked up on the internet how to get happy again, but all it did was suggest a bunch of deep breathing exercises and self-reflection which was, quite frankly, the thing I was trying to avoid.

Left with no other alternatives, I went outside.

Outside is scary. I don’t know if you know this, but outside is where other people are who aren’t your dog, girlfriend, cat, or TV. On TV and the internet, I can shut people off and go do other things like read books or hide in my bathroom. Outside was just chockfull of people who wanted to be near me, but not to talk to me. No, they wanted to talk to my dog. My dog, not understanding that my current state of mind was in hide-and-don’t-seek mode, wagged her tail and welcomed attention and whatever treats older Czechs carry around in their pockets. This led to conversations. Who has conversations when they want to feel better? Psychos, that’s who.

On Easter Sunday I awoke to a light and bright morning. My clock said it was a little after 5:30 am. Something was off. For the last four months the only light that existed at 5:30 am was the one coming from the fridge that I was trying to commit suicide by freezing myself in. I have no faith in the supposed restorative and resurrective powers of Easters. I stepped out onto the balcony. What is happening?

Then it dawned on me – the daylight savings fairy had come. The cat came out, unimpressed but with a certain wariness that shows the sun had clearly had an effect on her. The dog takes the opportunity to look under the balcony wall at the park below. Nevertheless, nobody feels comfortable.

Daylight savings is a northern locale is an odd thing. One day you’re eking through days that start at 8ish and that end at 5 or 6ish and the next you have the midnight sky. Everyone gets confused – the dog, the cat, my emotions. In Prague, it’s almost as if one minute it’s dark mornings and the next day we are closing our blinds at 6 pm. Eating dinner at 7 feels like you’re having an early lunch. Day drinking takes on an element of guilt that I hate to admit actually adds to the fun.

Here are my tips for dealing with daylight savings.

• Inform your pets about the time change with a stern lecture on punctuality. They’ll still stare at you blankly, but at least you’ll feel like you’re making a difference in their understanding of temporal mechanics.
• Use daylight saving time as an excuse to start happy hour seven hours early. After all, if time can play tricks on us, why can’t we return the favor? Tonight’s (read today’s) trick – waking up hungover at midnight. Tada!
• Treat bedtime like you’re 97 years old and just had a glorious dinner at Denny’s. It’s 4:30 pm. Time for some Wheel of Fortune and then a nine-hour nap.
• Embrace the chaos and declare daylight saving time the official “free pass” for all your time-related mishaps. Missed a meeting? Time change. Forgot your anniversary? Time change. Shoot the neighbor’s alpaca again? Two words: Time. Change.
• If you’re the artsy type, use daylight saving as inspiration. After all, postmodern literature was meant to be read in times of abject confusion and hallucination, such as daylight savings or when you’re jetlagged, or you’ve been a prisoner of war blinking messages in Morse code to your roommate to discard the porno under your bed, for example. Have you ever seen a Dali painting? What about the clocks? Coincidence? Blink-blink-long blink-long blink-blink.
• Finally, dealing with the existential dread. Don’t. It may be an hour later, but your life is still spiralling into a bottomless pit of bills, mortgages, short vacations, and your neighbor’s alpaca.   

Writing articles for kids has opened my eyes to a lot of different things. Mostly this is how much I didn’t know. I used to read these articles in coursebooks and think ‘wow, how did this person come up with this stuff?’ and then I would act as though I knew this information.

Thea reality is, this information is come across now and then when you get off of Reddit and read things called ‘books’ and ‘articles’. Here are some weird things I’ve learned this week in my writings.

The first known author was a priestess in ancient Mesopotamia. Not only did she write about and tributes to her favorite gods, she is the first person to write autobiographical information. One of the things she wrote about was how much politicians suck. There was a contingent of politicians and rulers who were trying to remove her from power. The first (known) writing we can attach to a name and the person is complaining about politicians. We never stood a dog damned chance, did we? Also, had they succeeded she might have been executed, banished, exiled, or gone through a humiliation ritual – things which we should bring back for politicians who, say, try to overthrow the government because they’re orange petulant man-children.  

There was a thing called the ‘Great Emu War’. It took place in Australia in 1932. The Australian military deployed soldiers armed with machine guns to combat this infestation of emus in Western Australia. And the soldiers lost. While humans have waged wars on infesting species before and since (wolves, toads, pythons, republicans) this – as far as I know – is the only ground campaign against a non-human enemy. And we lost. The message – don’t fuck with nature or things that live in Australia, and definitely don’t fuck with both at the same time.

However, there was something known as the Battle of the Frogs and Mice. This occurred in Ancient Greece and was mentioned by the poet Homer as a bizarre legend about a battle between frogs and mice. According to the story, the mice sought to avenge the death of their king by waging war against the frogs. The battle was said to have taken place in a swamp, with the frogs ultimately emerging victorious. But we all knew that.

Some communities in the U.S. throw cow poop as part of local festivities on July 4^th. While most American communities limit their creative activities on July 4^th to bald eagle meet and greets or a vast number of eating contests (hotdogs, watermelon, pie), some use it as a way to get things away from them – such as cow poop. Other communities dress up their animals in American flags and march them in parades. Just as John Adams would have wanted.

Please keep alert on this April Fool’s Day. We have been duped by left-handed hamburgers, toilet paper shortages, and attacking Martians. And I put it beyond no person on the right wing of American politics to try to instigate something insane and then claim it was an April Fool’s joke. And, well, I put it beyond nobody who supports right wing politics to eagerly believe it. Don’t drink too much. Pay attention. And remember, other channels exist.   

From Bacchanalias to Flappers: A Look at History’s Worst Drunken Shindigs

Find a drink and then find another. We need to wander down the road of history’s most legendary, and arguably stupid, oh and drunken parties. From ancient Rome to modern times, humanity has a knack for turning festivities into fiascos, and these shindigs take the cake (or should we say, the keg).

1. The Bacchanalias of Ancient Rome: Back in the days of togas and laurel wreaths, the Romans knew how to throw a party. But none could quite compare to the Bacchanalias – wild, wine-soaked festivals dedicated to the god of wine, Bacchus. Picture this: a drunken frenzy of dancing, singing, and debauchery that would make even the rowdiest frat party blush. Let’s just say things often got out of hand, with revelers running amok through the streets, clad in nothing but grape leaves and a whole lot of liquid courage.
2. The Royal Masquerade Ball of 1392: In medieval Europe, masquerade balls were a popular pastime among the aristocracy. However, at the Royal Masquerade Ball of 1392, things took a turn for the chaotic. As guests donned elaborate masks and extravagant costumes, confusion reigned supreme when the king accidentally swapped masks with the court jester. What followed was a series of hilariously awkward encounters as the king found himself mistaken for the jester, and vice versa. Let’s just say it was a night of mistaken identities, royal blunders, and more than a few misplaced jests.
3. The Whiskey Rebellion Bash of 1794: In the early days of the United States, tensions ran high over the government’s attempts to impose a whiskey tax. In protest, farmers and distillers banded together in what became known as the Whiskey Rebellion. But what started as a serious political protest quickly devolved into a rowdy party when a group of rebels decided to raid a government warehouse stocked with confiscated whiskey. As barrels were tapped and spirits flowed freely, what began as a protest turned into a raucous whiskey-fueled bash, complete with rebel yells and impromptu square dances. It was a rebellion unlike any other, where the only casualties were a few sore heads and bruised egos.
4. The Gin Craze of 18th Century London: Fast forward a few centuries to merry old England, where the streets ran rampant with gin-soaked madness. The Gin Craze of the 1700s saw Londoners guzzling gallons of the juniper-infused spirit faster than you could say “hiccup.” Gin shops popped up on every corner, offering cheap booze to the masses – with disastrous consequences. From drunken brawls to hallucinatory visions, it was like a scene straight out of a Shakespearean tragedy, minus the poetic dialogue and with a lot more vomiting.
5. The Roaring Twenties Prohibition Parties: Ah, the Jazz Age – a time of flappers, speakeasies, and bathtub gin. Prohibition may have outlawed alcohol, but it certainly didn’t dampen the party spirit. In secret underground clubs, bootleggers and flappers danced the Charleston ’til dawn, fueled by illegal hooch and a healthy disregard for the law. It was a time of excess and rebellion, with gangsters and socialites rubbing elbows in a boozy blur of bathtub gin cocktails and illicit jazz music.

It is very clear to me that the things in my house have lives of their own. My backpack ends up next to my bed all the time. He wants to be close to me. My toaster has a knack for ending up in unusual places. This is why I try to be nice to her. I take baths sometimes.

My shirts button themselves all the way from bottom to top when I’m not looking. Burke swears it’s not her and since I am a lighter sleeper than her, I can’t imagine she’s doing it without my notice. The cat doesn’t have opposable thumbs and anyway, she’s always gone for the unbuttoned look. The dog, well, the dog can’t climb all the way up there, you know. And yet, every day I take out a shirt, every single button is done.

I seem to recall that a lot of my childhood was taken up by watching movies where things come to life and have adventures while their owners are otherwise engaged. Toys, toy soldiers, a brave little toaster, Christmas gifts. All of it wreaking havoc. But the inanimate objects in my home seem to be active and very boring.

My couch is just a bit of a dick. It complains about my choice of TV shows and moans about my snack choices. I’ve been trying to pick out better snacks but it’s hard. At the store today I was struck by the sadness that I am trying to impress a couch with food. My microwave randomly changes its cooking times. I scorched my popcorn last night. The couch was unimpressed. I’m pretty sure my phone made a rude comment about a message I sent yesterday. My phone. It’s plastic and a screen and I love it more than my mother. I can’t be laughed at by my phone. Also I think it’s gossiping with my tablet and conspiring to prank call my friends and family (just in case). But the real gossip happens in my silverware drawer. And drama too. I think the spoons are staging a coup over the spatulas. The forks have formed a clique with the knives. They keep shifting over drawers when I’m not looking. I think my blender is writing poetry. It’s getting avant-garde in here. The less said about the food in my fridge the better. I think the mayonnaise is drinking the ketchup.

I have found two of my glasses’ microfiber wipes in different places in the park. They have both escaped and chose a life on the ground in a park over living in my pocket and helping me see better. This is both humiliating and depressing. And it hurts a little. Anyway, if you see any of my stuff, just send it back my way and don’t let it give you no lip.   

At the monthly meeting of the Central Europeans Morons Club held later this month at a swim club to be decided, I will be named Moron of the Month. For I am a moron.

I am in no way allowed to shop after having a beer. Something happens to me, a lowering of not only inhibitions, but also a complete buying into the concept of the thing. Sometimes before going to the store, I decide that a beer is in order. And in my experience, a beer is almost always followed by like three of his friends. On one particular day, I decided to go shopping in a Kaufland and stopped for a drink on the way.

Let’s fast forward to the store. I bought coffee and something for dinner. I got fruit and successfully avoided the bread aisle, which I was rather proud of myself about since I was about four beers deep and would have thrown an old person under a bus for a ham sandwich. But no. I resisted temptation. I stuck to my list: fruit, veggies, coffee, hummus. I was a rock. But while looking for a light bulb (E-14 warm) I stumbled into the kitchen utensil aisle. And this is where I made my first mistake of looking around.

Kitchen appliances look so sleek in the store. They look unused and useful and yellow and space age. Me-Pre-Four-Beers knows that spending money on a utensil in a supermarket is like making out with Lucifer. But Me-Post-Four-Beers seemed to think it was a good idea. I picked up an onion chopper and, in a moment I turn over in my head every night before bed, I put it in my cart and sashayed myself towards the checkout. I picked up an onion on the way.

To say that this onion chopper is the most useless thing in my house does a disservice to useless things. It’s doing more damage taking up space on my counter and has instead of reducing the time it takes to cut onions, it has added to it significantly. First of all, picking it up is akin to picking up the spinal column of a mummy you find one day in the desert. Its parts break apart and there is no clear mechanism to keep them together. Then, Dog forbid you want to actually ‘cut apart’ onions with this piece of wet pasta, then you are not in luck. To cut an onion with this requires taking it apart after it keeps getting stuck and then punctuating all of these actions with several robust curses to the Dogs of the kitchen.

Here is a list of things more useful than the onion chopper pictures above

An Aramaic to Bengali dictionary on a trip to Jupiter

A toaster in combat

A logical conversation with Donald Trump

A dildo made out of poached eggs

A bag of dildoes when you just want some poached eggs

You get the drift. My advice to you is, never ever buy a kitchen utensil from Kaufland. Ever. If you do, you are a moron like me and there’s only enough poached eggs for one winner of this month’s award.

I’ve been watching a lot of frontier movies lately as I’ve been a little depressed and watching people die in the open planes with arrows sticking out of them seems to bring me some joy and comfort. Last week was Dances with Wolves. Where did you think I’d gotten the imagery of the previous sentence?

There’s a scene in this movie wherein soldier John Dunbar finds a degree of solace and freedom on the open plains and frontier. He befriends a wolf with whom he becomes a dance partner. The two are seen doing the Four Foot two-step and his moniker is born with the local indigenous peoples. Then everyone dies.

It’s when imbibing frontier movies that I embark upon a little fantasy. In this fantasy I am John Dunbar. I am laconic, stoic, and at turmoil over inner peace. I am driven towards solace. Not one of these things represents my actual reality in any way. Further, I have moved west. I have been noted by local indigenous populations. I smell like a ferret. Of course in my fantasy, I quietly toil through the day fixing horseshoes and drinking in the open air and nothing things down in my leather journal. My legs are much longer. None of it makes much sense.

I don’t really want to spend any time with wolves. I am fairly certain I’d decide to go visit some after having too much to drink and become a headline in the morning paper and a winner of a Darwin Award. I think I am much more comfortable with my current animalistic situation. I share a small flat with a woman and two four-legged animals – a 17-year-old cat and a 2.5-year-old shihtzu. These animals – wonky-eyed, needy, soft – are much more my speed.

It is not just my opinion; it is theirs. My cat and dog treat me as though I am one of them, only slightly shorter and with a genetic defect that allows me to turn the knobs on the stove and open up the door. They spend all of their time on or very near me. I sleep with a Shihtzu resting comfily in the arc of my legs and with a cat sleeping snugly on my chest. Burke was irritated by this at first, seeing it as a slight. But after 400 + straight days of sleeping unencumbered by a furry animal, she has changed her tune.

It doesn’t stop at bed. A trip to the bathroom involves me, a book, and two animals who sit beneath me and just hang out. An afternoon or evening of cooking is done in the presence of a cat Sphinxing on a shelf and a dog lying on a low box. Both wait for scraps. They are surprised when they are offered. Every single morning I work on the couch from about 5:30-7:30 flanked by two little sleeping animals.

So it is with some minor regret that I am not Dances with Wolves, but rather Shuffles with Shihtzus. But a person must be true to their nature. If you need me, I will be in the living room shuffling with a Shihtzu and with a cat on my chest.

Recently for the kid’s magazine I was asked to write an article on the world’s smartest species of animal. (Species, so not specific animals, so the chicken who could do math in that Liam Neeson film was out). Of course, I found that our animal friends are quite intelligent and talented. What started as surprise led to admiration and then, as usual, terror.   

How smart? Look. Whenever someone makes an observation, there are morons on the internet to point out the limits of the statement. These limits had already been assumed by most people who possess a brain, and so let’s just say that, no, most animals could not draw us a map to Munich and most animals wouldn’t be able to get us back from Jupiter after space travel gone wrong or start cooking a pot roast before in the slow cooker should we be running late home. Many animals are, however, more intelligent than those who force us to point out these things. Those people are also responsible for warning labels telling us not to clean your eyeballs with Windex or to eat chemical laundry pods to fight respiratory disease. But here we are.

Nevertheless, there are some smart animals. Should you be the type of person to mess with animals, you might want to lay off your local populations of octopus or crows. Both can recognize specific people and gain revenge on those who wrong them. Octopus have the added benefit of owning eight arms and being able to open containers. Crows understand physics. You wouldn’t piss of Neil deGrasse Tyson, so why would you piss off his spirit bird?

Raccoons can break into homes and play chess. As for which is more terrifying to me, it’s a tossup. I don’t want a racoon to break into my house, but I really don’t want to lose to one in chess. And the thought of one who can break into my house and then beat me in chess is an existential threat nobody ran by me when they were registering me for a trip on Planet X. The African Grey up the road from you is as smart as the three-year-old human child next door. I mean, virtually everything is. But still. Spooky.

Not just that, but many animals seem to be learning. A shark just carried a turtle with a plastic bag around its neck to a chip of people. How? Is Earth so endemic with people making ‘watch me save the animals’ videos that sharks have gotten wise to the practice. Also, are sharks and turtles now teaming up? I gotta be honest, I didn’t have sharks and turtles team up on my 21^st century Bingo card. But then, neither did I have congressional republicans and Putin. So, there you go…

Animals are smart. Sure, we have opposable thumbs and airplanes and aircraft carriers, but you’re not ready 100% of the time, are you? No, one minute you’re just some guy bringing home his groceries and the next minute you’re being tricked into the Rook-King switch by some local racoon who broke into your house. My dog and cat are geniuses in their own way. My cat’s genius fully centers on her ability to drive a 49-year-old man clinically insane. My dog’s genius is all related to getting food or getting carried.    

Spooky.

Perhaps a good rule of thumb is to just be nice to animals. They may, after all, be in charge one day. Not of us, for we will thankfully be dead long before they hit their Stone Age. But for our kids’ kids’ kids’ kids, who may one day be working in the court of a local crow and his octopus friends, just be nice.

We recently took a weekend trip to Rome (I’m unpacking my bags now). If anyone doesn’t know why Rome is called the Eternal City they should walk through a neighborhood in the afternoon. On our hike from the Trastevere train station to our room around 3 pm, the sun shone red and gold on the buildings. It transformed gas stations and shabby apartment buildings into fortresses of time. Resting up against the Tiber’s left bank, the little section of Trastevere is warm and small and inviting. There are winding cobbled lanes I know I will get lost on and small shops selling gelato and pizza by the slice and cappuccino where I know I will lose a month’s pay. It’s no matter. You don’t come to Rome and not indulge.

We take in the sites. The imagination roils at what the Circus Maximus, Senate, and Palatine Hill looked like. Though my sophomore year Latin teacher would kill me if he knew I kept calling it Palpatine Hill. Each wander down an ancient lane blows your mind when considered that Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius’s sandals scuffed these cobbles. At night, we make reservations at a local trattoria and eat fish and pasta and bread and drink wine and eat more pasta. We are certain our doctors are suffering night sweats without knowing the root cause. Everything is homey. Everything is awesome.

Our neighborhood’s demographic is surely the young and hip. Fortunately, to rent a room there we were not forced to answer questions of pop culture or fashion, for we would have surely been cast across the river with the rest of the old folks. Our hotel is encircled by pubs and bars. Outside our window at night is the incessant, too-loud chatter of the tipsy traveller punctuated by the impossible screech of bottles being dumped into a dumpster or a recycling bin.

We don’t mind. We have a comfy bed and pizza can be carried home. Besides, after walking 20 miles on Friday and 8 miles on Saturday, a comfy bed and a TV is very welcome. It’s here that we find our happy place. It seems reasonable that while on a trip in Italy or to some other mecca of human civilization and cultivation a person should infuse themselves with culture 24 hours a day and immerse themselves in history and knowledge, the fact is, sometimes you just need bad TV. And Italy knows how to deliver bad TV.

A range of American TV and movies are represented on Italian TV. There are sci-fi shows (La Brea), the 1970s PI show The Rockford Files suggest that James Garner has a following among the inhabitants of the peninsula. But most of all, Italians seem to love the American western frontier. Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman and Dances with Wolves were on every night. But it was the wholesome adventures of the Ingalls family that really got them. Every day multiple episodes of Little House on the Prairie (i.e. L-Hop) were on Italian television.