Edgar Allan Van Gogh

“This was the unkindest cut of all; For, when the noble Caesar saw him stab, Ingratitude, more strong than traitors' arms, Quite vanquish'd him”
--- From Julius Caesar (III, ii, 187)

I have for you a tale today, my children. A tale of blood, revenge, and trust betrayed. Know ye: this tale be not for the faint of heart! If thou would read on, say not ye were unprepared for the wickedness contained herein. Thou hast been warned . . .

Let’s start with the fact that God is an evil prick with a terrible sense of humor. He finds it a source of immense amusement that when a man loses the hair on his head, he begins to grow it in places where hair was never meant to grow. Oh yes, the almighty gets quite the chuckle out of the fact that I’m bald as an egg, yet from the neck down I look like some mutant gorilla whose been bathing in Rogaine! (oh yea, God’s a frikkin’ laugh-riot!) So yesterday, while standing in front of the bathroom mirror, I note the presence of a particularly long hair growing from the side of my left ear. Actually, it was more like a length of fine thread than a hair; long enough to wrap three or four times around my head and still be able to wave at passing children. I noted said hair with a sigh of disgusted acceptance (I have long since tired of the Creator’s ‘little jokes’) and pulled out a pair of scissors to do away with the offending follicle. I have become quite the hand at eliminating stray growths of this nature from the most bizarre regions of my anatomy. (DON’T ask!) One quick snip of the scissors and they’re gone! This was no ordinary hair though; this was a super-stealthy, acrobatic, hair with a remarkable will to live and some kick-ass survival skills.

It was a Ninja Hair!

Yup, a Ninja Hair. Nine feet long, and easily seen by passing aircraft, this hair still managed to avoid the sharpened blade of my deadly scissors through the use of mystic Ninja Hair secrets from the deepest Orient. Its slender body merely bent beneath the closing blades of my scissor, taking no harm whatever and springing back out once released to laugh at my puny Western technology.

“Bwahaha! Your puny Western technology is no match for my Ninja Hair skills! Bwahahah!” (Okay, so it didn’t really talk, but I swear it was mocking me . . . the way it just stood straight out from my ear like that . . . mockery, I say!)

After several minutes of battle, I knew I was outmatched. I summoned reinforcements to aid me in my battle against this follicle of death and mockery. I (dumb-ass that I am!) called The Wife. The plan was for her to take down the Ninja Hair while I stood perfectly still. I thought that since she had two hands to use and was not restricted to sighting him in a mirror, she would have more success at removing this denizen from the deepest depths of male-pattern-baldness hell. Oh, but he was not so easily defeated! The first cut she took went very much as my own had: he merely bent beneath her cut and laughed at her as well:

“Bwahahaha!”

That’s when things turned ugly.

I should have known better. I should have seen the warning signs. I should never have given a sharp, dangerous, instrument of destruction to a woman whose comment on my last blog entry read:

“Remember, DEAR, the Revenge is a dish best served cold and I'm just the Bitch to do it . . . heheheheh” --- The Wife

You see, a smarter man would have expected what happened next.

I stood perfectly still as she reached out with the deadly scissors, took careful aim at the hair, smiled, then lunged forward and CUT MY GODDAM EAR OFF!!!!

The wound was epic: blood gushed out of my ear in a giant geyser, spraying crimson across the newly painted walls of my bathroom. My ear fell to the floor, flopping about like some spastic dolphin having bad things done to him with a salad fork and I . . . well, I screeched like a little girl who just found a spider in her panties! All the while, the sound of laughter echoed in my ears as my wife and her secret ally (My Ninja Hair! Try to keep up with the story, please.) crowed in delight at the wreck they had made of my tender head.

“Bwahahah!” they both laughed, “Make a mockery of us, will you? Bwahahah!”

After crawling about on the floor in a pool of blood, fighting through the agony as I sought for my severed ear, The Wife finally realized she might have gone too far. I pointed out that the police would certainly read my blog and see her hideous threats toward my person. She relented enough to help me locate and re-attach my severed appendage via a tube of super-glue and some band-aids. She attempted to apologize and claim it was an accident but she would have been more convincing if she’d managed to get those words out without breaking into gales of laughter each time she tried. The conversation went something like this:

Me: “You cut off my friggin’ ear!”
Her: (laughing) “Oh for God’s sake, I barely nicked you!”
Me: “Nicked me? I’m gonna have to change my name to Van Gogh!”
Her: (still laughing) “It’s not even gonna bleed . . . Oh!” (shock at the gallons of blood pouring from my ear!)
Me: “See? I’m gonna bleed to death!”
Her: (laughing yet again!) “Oh, stop! I’ll put a band-aid on it.”
Me: “Band-aid? BAND-AID? How about you call a goddam surgeon to re-attach my ear! You did this on purpose!”
Her: (struggling to control laughter) “What? Why would I cut your ear?”
Me: “Cuz I made fun of you on my blog! You threatened me in writing . . . I have proof! I’m calling the police!”
Her: (tears running down her face from laughter) “Oh yea, I planned the whole thing! I made you into a hairy freak just so I could cut off your ear one day!”

See how unsympathetic she was to my plight? Alternating between wiping away tears of laughter and trying to replace my ear in something approximating its original position on my head, she convinced me not to call the police. For the sake of our son, I decided to simply let this vile act of mutilation and betrayal pass.
The kicker of course, is that after re-attaching my ear, the Ninja Hair is still there . . . mocking me with its nine-foot-long, invulnerable, body. (Sigh.) Such is my life. I live with a psychopathic, ear-cutting, murder-plotting, nut of a wife who laughs at my agony. The joke is on her though: little does she know that I’ve placed the amputated ear in her purse, so that I can listen to her plotting against me! Next time, I shall not be caught unaware! I will know when she’s coming for me because I have planted The Tell-Tale Ear inside the lining of her purse. I can still hear with it through an ancient mystical spell that was given to me by a Raven one night after he and I got drunk on a Cask of Amontillado. I give due warning to you, my readers: if I should suddenly disappear from these pages, seek for me in the Rue Morgue! I have no doubt this woman will one day be the Fall of the House of Coppinger. I should leave her . . . just take my mutilated ear and go some place safe . . . but I am torn. I feel caught between The Pit and the Pendulum. She’s bloodthirsty, sure: but she’s got a truly evil sense of humor and you GOTTA appreciate that!

Ah, what to do?

I figure I just won’t let her touch any more sharp objects and we should be fine. I will however be sleeping with one eye open, just in case she decides to go all Lorena Bobbit on me.

(Oh, and her version of the story goes like this: “I barely nicked your ear with the scissors and you whined like a baby for hours!” Hmmm . . . perhaps more accurate; but not nearly as entertaining as my version!)

Later!