I Live! JA MAN!

Greetings dear Anthemites from the great World Capital of "the art of rolling doobies and being unemployed yet deliciously happy." A.K.A. Jamaica. I finally made it to a computer located under the shade of a certain "laid-back" Native in this beach resort who happens to own a computer that is as old and large as my mother who has accompanied me here. Each typed letter takes a grand total of 4 seconds to appear after typed. I've seen gas pumps process more expeditiously. Torture! But any trial is worth it for my dear readers. (Especially when the torture is accompanied by the sound of gentle waves and the savage tinklings of faint steel drums.)

We move to our second resort location shortly and I am sure there will be a computer there that isn't overloaded with obscene pictures of native women and lewd videos taxing the already fatigued peewee hard drive. No pun intended. HA! Oh dear me the delight of these dark and exotic natives has gone and made Herbert quite jovial. HA! Wonderful! I do believe in another life I would be a missionary here in this sunny land of delightful unemployment. I can only imagine what it must have been like to live in the medieval era here. Superstition must have been as rampant and wild as a Voodoo orgy under a blazing comet.

I fear my greed would have got the best of me and I might have made a killing on selling trinkets and relics. My riches would then set me up as a local monarch, feared as a god. The history books would have then been filled with stories of the powerful ruler of the province of "Jamacbert,” the great conqueror of the new world! Down lustful pride! Down I say! Whatever is wrong with me?

Oh dear me, it looks like I've been down wind of the bartender here who has been smoking something NOT of the tobacco family. I do believe everything looks a little more interesting. Look there! A crab! What a delightful creature! It is casting a small crab shadow on the sand! The shadow faintly resembles my dear old mother... I must investigate closer.

In a few days, you will here the story of how I managed to get a free vacation for my mother and I via the generosity of Loki, but until then, sit tight dear Anthemites and know that your dear Herbert is in good hands! ""JA WHOL MAN!"

Operation: Enigma Intercept

Dear Anthemites,

I have ascertained an email. I cannot disclose how or who privies me this valuable information and I will not kick a gift horse in the mouth. Here is the email that was sent by Loki to a certain Married woman "Mims" who used to sing in the Choir.

Minister Loki: "The service was a disaster today Mims. I don’t know what happened in “Trading My Sorrows” but one of the pages was totally missing. Dammit! I looked like a complete fool. And that Herbert… that filthy, fat, bloated, self-absorbed, CROTCH. To make matters worse he pulled out all the stops on that stupid organ and drowned-out the entire band. I have no clue what in the HELL he was playing but it wasn’t the Praise song. He then totally ignored my cut off attempts, which made me look even more stupid. I could have kicked his fat ass right then and there. If it weren’t for his mother’s LARGE gifts to the music program in the past 20 years, he’d bee a gonner already. I knew when I accepted those recent gifts I might has well have tattooed she and Herbert's name on my chest with a header that read "Property of: Herbert and Momma Crotch"

"After the set, the pastor came to the podium and gave me a very dirty look. Well, he can go ta’ Hell! I am tired of tiptoeing around him. It was an honest mistake. Although my secretary is totally convinced she put every page in its place. Austin seems to think Herbert did it. I wouldn't doubt it one bit. Time to keep an eye on that fat preening turd."

I will keep you updated on what will be done with this information. Until then, know that the upper hand has been seized!

Chapter 3: El Comandante Has Asked for a Song!

This morning I began my counter offense. As I walked passed Loki’s music stand before service after the “band” had left to consume selfishly all the remaining sausage kolaches, I gently opened his folder for service and swiftly removed a pertinent page of music. I wadded the accursed page of Praise and Worship, tossed it into the covered timpanis collecting dust and make-up residue from the Praise Hussies, and made my way to rescue a handful of Kolaches from hair gel and “dude” mafia.

This first test of saboteur proved a fruitful, one-time, water-testing event. I have dipped my cloak and dagger toe in the waters and the waters are warm!

The service began with the "4-on-the-floor" tribal thumps and asinine repitition of our churhes favorite 2 words to squawk. "Yes Lord." (I tell you, sometimes I feel as though the congregation thinks of God as a cheap one night stand.) I maintained my composure and waited. It came. It came in all its glory. When we arrived at the point of the missing page, the minister simply stopped singing and stared bewilderingly at the congregants while the band and I blazed on. He was then forced to do nothing but waive his arms for the remainder of the Song, spouting, pathetically wrong words into the microphone. As an extra bonus, the words jumbled became a tad blasphemous.

The “pianist” tried in vain to cue him with an overemphasis on the Melody that could have been heard by Helen Keller but nothing worked. To this baboonery I made my Grande entrance riding my trusty steed Elizabeth. I opened Elizabeth’s pipes full throttle to draw attention away from the bumbling Loki with the melody of a Bach Choral ingeniously juxtaposed over the goofy P & W song. I finished the last Chord of the chorus and held it an extra 4 seconds, all the while noticing in my peripheral the minister trying in vain to cut me off with a snake-like cue. For a moment he looked like he was putting on a dramatic hand-puppet show.

The bell rang and Herbert returned to his corner invigorated and without a scratch.

And So it Begins

The Ku has begun. I paid a visit to Loki today and he has notified me that they will be needing me in only one of the two services. This means that my already anemic and ungrateful salary will be cut in HALF. It is official; I am now probably the lowest paid organ virtuoso in the country and Loki is pure slime. He has also notified me rather curtly and with a serpentine smirk that the small and insufficient room that I was given to keep my organ supplies and Papier-mâché sculptures is needed by puffy-lip surfer-boy. I guess surfer-boy is now his full-time bitch-in-P & W-heat.

Oh dear Anthemites, the hot but brilliant, violent thoughts that began to run through my unfairly endowed brain at that moment. For the first time I felt the burning fire of the puritans, bloodthirsty for a Witch to roast. I felt the anger of Sampson surging in my bones and suddenly wanted to rise up and topple the entire building on his balding and chaffed scalp whilst roaring like Aslan of old. But, I kept quiet. I said only two profound words: “I see.”

Now that might seem like very little but much is said with very little from the greatest of minds. E= mc2 changed science forever. So when I say, “I see,” I DO, in fact SEE ALL. I see what is going on here. And I SEE into Loki’s confused and culturally disfigured, limping cortex. They are slowly trying to prod me out of my post by choking my supplies. Well, I have news. I have been storing up plenty of dormant energy for such a time and could probably go without food for a solid year and still have energy around my lusty and powerful torso to burn.

HA! Avast ye you musical pimps. I have not yet begun to fight. I am beginning to see that the only alternative is a counter-offensive. It will need to be extra-cunning because believe it or not, true imbeciles are hard to usurp. They can make terrible scenes destroying all of the subtleties of the cunning assailant. Just try to capture a wild and deranged kitten after it has clawed your Qashqa'i Persian rug from the 16th century to shreds. It is nearly suicide I can tell you. Like my deranged and berserk kitty, the late Princess Lilykins, if they act rashly they must be then be taken down messily and violently. I will keep council and begin my offensive soon. Stay tuned. Dark times await us Anthemites, dark times.

Young Herbert Part 2: "Retribution" (Essential Interlude)

Gym class was first on the roster and I arrived early to “undress” for battle. I waited in the shadows of the bathroom stall until I heard the oafish laughs of my enemies asking where “Rotten Crotch” was. It was time. I flung the door open and proudly sauntered, as if without a care, through the locker room with draped towel over my rolling, muscular, grizzly bear torso. The towel, perfectly concealing my fiery cup nestled above my strutting, mighty oaks.

They vermin noticed me and stopped mid-dirty joke. The sight of me strolling unprotected was too good to be true for my enemies. It was if a harmless lamb was thrown into a den of starving, crazed wolves. The first wolf leapt to his feet and struck with a lusty laugh crying “CROTCH WHACK!” He almost salivated as he flung his knuckle with abandon towards my incubators-for-future-kings.

His knuckle was doomed. For his strike was greeted with the hard-shelled wall of my concealed battle cup instead of my tender groin. To my absolute delight, he let out a high-pitched squall and lifted his hand in front of his face to display a badly disfigured and broken finger. My eyes filled with the wild zeal of battle. With a loud savage cry I flung off my enormous towel exposing my new fiery shield held in place by handsome purple jock strap. My raucous buttocks proudly unleashed in all their manly glory. I felt as if Atlas had been released of his huge load, mother earth, and free to assail his foes without fear. Showing NO mercy, I whipped the whimpering boy in his own crotch with my giant, damp towel and yelled CRRRROTCH WHACK YOU FOUL DOG!

This was the second and final blow of that battle. The rest of the wolves stood in awe with jaws a-dangle at the scene. It must have been a sight that they would wake in cold sweat to see for the remainder of their days. -Me, in my gladiator attire, hovering like a giant fleshy mountain over the sniveling moronic master of the acne gang. Ah, if only Da Vinci could have seen such a scene, what a famed mural it would have made.

I ferociously burst through the scattering boys with a vicious war cry, snapping everything that moved. It wasn’t long until the room was cleared and Herbert the valiant was all that remained.

Triumph!

Young Herbert Part 1: "Reckoning" (Essential Interlude)

More has occurred in this Saga but to continue, you will need to grasp my hand and let me lead you on a brief journey into Hebert past...

When I was a young lad, plagued with the prison sentence of Public Schools, I was ordered to enroll in at least 1 year of gym class. I cannot or won’t go into the full details of what it was like to have both a superior mind as well as a generous frame in a public school, but I will say, it came packaged with consequences. Others can, painfully scorn genius by itself. To be endowed with Genius and dashing looks… well, only one of noble blood could withstand the onslaught of teenage-male jealous hatred that taunts this two in one curse.

The onslaught that I was forced to bear in the locker-room was a particularly vicious and splintered cross. The game my tormentors invented in my honor was called “Crotch Whack,” which I would liken unto a kind of testicular gorilla warfare. Yes, many a young acne'd vermin lost giant chunks of hair in their attacks on young gentle Herbert's fruit and vine, but alas, the pain I endured was wretched…

Dante never imagined such a level of hell that was as loathsome. My hand hovers even now as I recall the stinging, throbbing trauma.

After months of enduring torture with no end in sight, I decided that my genius must aid my brawn to win this daily battle and cease this torture. So one Saturday, I walked 4 miles to a sporting store, my first and last visit since, and bought a large Athletic cup. That night, by candle light and accompanied by the tribal music of Zimbabwe on vinyl, I painted a fiery sword upon the cup’s ventilated face. It looked fearful indeed. I then dyed the Jock strap a royal purple and hung it on my grandfather’s Globe to dry for the impending battle the following morning. I read excerpts of Beowulf and Tolkien aloud by roaring fire to strengthen my spirit for the next day’s duel.

The next morning I awoke and prepared myself for battle and was off to the bus.

Immediately, as I strode past snickering students on the bus, I knew they sensed my enlarged “confidence.” I knew at that moment, victory would be mine...

(To be continued...)

Is it the East?... (A Bittersweet Interlude)

Dear readers, I will postpone my quest for one day to tell you some magical news. I, Herbert Sebastian Crotch, do believe I am IN LOVE. She arrived tonight in choir. Her brilliant green eyes could pierce miles of masculine flesh to puncture the noblest and guarded hearts. Oh sweet Esmeralda!

But soft! I must keep my distance. I mustn’t break her heart. I am a tempestuous soul. One who cannot be tamed or resisted. A Byron on the mast of a great ship called fate. A lion, too proud for a Pride. My Pirates heart would only taunt her and she deserves more than this Don Quixote can give. I am a bitter, winter wind and she a window flower.

You dear reader will not know, from the limited posts, how rare this actually is… To prove the anomaly of mon amour, I will venture one more confession to authenticate… For a brief moment, while passing a bar filled with those that succumb to every vice known to man, I found myself almost enjoying what Stravinsky called “the musical equivalent of masturbation”… Jazz. I blush at the confession and crude choice of words but nothing else but love could explain my delight in a sound that would normally have made me walk faster and hum Bach inventions loudly to drown out the aural and moral assault.

I also missed my cue four times tonight at choir practice. To which the “Minister” began to grit his teeth and say my name amid angry glare. But what would HE know of love but for his Toupee collection and polyester? I grow more and more weary of he that shall be henceforth named “Loki.” (The irony being “low-key”) Yes, I thought it cute as well.

Oh heart, let us go to the living room organ and improvise choral fantasies while reading passages aloud from my beloved Augustine Confessions. But first I think, an emergency trip to Dunkin Donuts...

H. S. C.
Appolo