Sweet mother of fuck, it’s the 100th This Week in Nelson! Who could have imagined? Who could have possibly dreamed we’d be able to touch the mighty, iridescent face of god together this way!? Not Stu. But he’s already been chastised for his lack of faith in previous anniversaries. We’re beyond such mortal concerns now. And how fitting that the whopping anniversary edition has to encompass two actual weeks due to my own special brand of laziness. It’s got chipotle flavor, this laziness. And just a kiss of honey. Do you taste it? I bet you do. I hope you do. Otherwise, what has all this been for? Nothing, you say. Yes, yes. Nothing. And everything! But mostly nothing. This week we’ve got the 100th motherfucking TWiN! Packed with goodies and piping hot! Dig in!
We begin with a testimonial from the infamous Jon Ratzlaff, without whom we would have had zero weeks in Nelson, for this whole thing was his idea/directive/insistent urging at the edge of a knife. Ladies and gentlemen, Jon Ratzlaff:
A Tribute to TWiN or HOW THIS WEEK IN NELSON RUINED MY LIFE!
Over a week ago, Nelson offered me the opportunity to “contribute” to the 100th TWiN. Giving me a week to accomplish this I took more than week thereby providing a convenient excuse for the delay in said 100th TWiN. Of course, to say such a thing says that one such as I could hold sway over the juggernaut that is TWiN. So I will leave Nelson to fabricate his own excuses, like last week’s “wedding” and “Saira”. But we’re getting off track, and I’ll try and keep it brief: TWiN ruined my life.
As I pulled into my driveway last night, I was confronted by a terribly pudgy, dark gray fuzzy specter. Evey. For those of you who don’t know this cat, she came into our life as a kitten, went slut at a very young age and frantically gave birth to five wonderful kittens (gratefully midwifed by my own daughter: Kathryn). These experiences have shaped her into the small framed, but wide hipped, kitty who irreverently trots through our house from time to time flopping her girth seemingly indiscriminately about, and compelling you to point a finger toward and in a deep voice say: “Evey”. And so there she was, staring me down, unafraid of the truck pulling up toward her, with that look in her eyes that she would do something terrible the moment I left the safety of my crappy truck cab. This led me to find myself listening to “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen.
Chorus:
Glory days well they'll pass you by
Glory days in the wink of a young girl's eye
Glory days, glory days
And this I got to thinking of my own Glory Days (or at least, perhaps, days more glorious than this) when I would occasionally crank out my own newsletter of my life and random musing surrounding it. Back then I was more physically fit, I had more hair, and my mental facilities were neat and tidy. But then I was introduced to a little thing you may have heard of: TWiN. Floored by the relevance, stunned by the humor, and overall pleased by the good use of the English language I became disheartened at my own work. Soon I became softer around the middle, my hair line seemed to become afraid of my eyebrows, and quite frankly my mind has seen better days. Obviously this could only be caused by only thing: TWiN.
Once realization set in I quickly took retaliation against my new arch nemesis: Nelson. Finding myself even going so far as to let TWO TWiN lay in my in-box UN-READ (for almost a week…). I could see it was taking its toll on Nelson. Soon enough, he was wearing down: acting delirious on stage of the Liberty Hall, turning thirty, and manufacturing a fantastical girlfriend “Saira”. I knew it only a matter of time, so I couldn’t help myself from envisioning life without TWiN. And it was a dry wasteland. Void of quotes of the week, empty of letters to Bill O’Reily, and lacking any sort of knowledge about what, and how much, Nelson has read recently! Horrible… and then I realized! It wasn’t TWiN that was ruining my life. It was Dames. How did I not see it before! What had I been thinking! What was I doing? I quickly re-read as many as I could (luckily I keep a bound copy of every one!) in an attempt to save our future! But was it enough? Have you done your part?
The End
jon
Quote of Nelson of the Week:
(taken from the Booth Log at the South Wind 12)
“After taking a closer look at it I finally realized that all it needed was to be lubricated, so it’s working fine now. I wish I’d thought of such an obvious solution sooner.
Things today were just fine. Ã N.”
Jon Ratzlaff, everybody! Thank you for your kind words, Jon. And for your gentle touch.
Birthday shout-out to TWiN! And Chad! And Melia! And Jason 3! And Kym! And Natalie Roady! Big dog birthday ups to you all!
Books read this week:
-Still reading Fates Worse Than Death by, Kurt Vonnegut
Yes, yes. Still lazy with the reading. But ease up off these nutz. I’ve read several hundred books these last 100 weeks. Everything is still above board and up to par.
Random out-of-context quotes of the week:
--“They’ve been screaming about pickles and nuts for hours. No one cares.”
--“You may have your faults, Andy. But at least you have pants on.”
--“Sorority girls have really let things go. Back in the day when they’d be getting ready to go out in the morning, they’d be all pearls, sweater set. Now, it’s PINK! Flip-flops.”
--“Do you know that some insurance companies consider spousal abuse a preexisting condition?”
--“As a scientist I just wish I could appreciate more things. Like cabins. Bicycles.”
--“Fold yourself in the middle!”
--“I also appreciate your soft, cloth funnel, Betty.”
--“It’s absurd. Putting the Amish in glass cases would be inhumane.”
--“It’s horrible. Horrible! I can’t watch this . . . this dancing!”
“And I cannot not watch it. May god have mercy on us all.”
--“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize the largest collection of traffic cones was in the Magna-fucking-Carta.”
--“Feel his anus. It’s soaking wet.”
--“They’re doing it in a canoe. Two guys, one boat.”
--“Bird law in this country is not reasonable.”
--“Sorry, let’s just call it what it is. Food rapist.”
My Emails to Bill O’Reilly this week:
(This first one was written for this special occasion by the backwoods awesome Will Averill and sent on to O’Reilly by me:)
-“Dear Mr. Bill O’Reilly, I just had to write you
Something really scared me, when I saw it on the news
A story ‘bout a little girl beaten black and blue
Bill O’Reilly, thought I’d take this right to you
Dear Mr. Bill O’Reilly, I don’t understand
Why they took her mom and dad away
I know they don’t mean to hit with wild angry hands
Tell them just how big they are I pray
Please don’t let them hurt your children
We need love and shelter from the storm
Please don’t let them hurt your children
Won’t you keep us safe and warm
Dear Mr. Bill O’Reilly, they say that she may die
Oh I hope the doctors stop the pain
I know that you could save her and take her up to the sky
So she would never have to hurt again
Please don’t let them hurt your children . . .
Dear Mr. Bill O’Reilly, please tell me what to do
And please don’t tell my daddy
But my mommy hits me, too
Please don’t let them hurt your children . . .
Sincerely,
Roboman and Sasser
15 September 2009”
(And here’s one from just me:)
-“Dear Mr. O’Reilly,
To poop, or not to poop: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous poop,
Or to take arms against a sea of poop,
And by opposing poop them? To die, to poop;
No more; and by a poop to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That poop is heir to, ‘tis a consummation
Devoutly to be poop’d. To die, to poop;
To poop: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that poop of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us poop: there’s the respect
That makes poop of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of poop,
The oppressor’s poop, the proud man’s poop,
The pangs of despised poop, the law’s poop,
The insolence of poop and the spurns
That patient poop of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his poop make
With a bare bodkin? who would poop bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary poop,
But that the dread of something after poop,
The undiscover’d country from whose poop
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
and makes us rather poop those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of?
Thus conscience does make poop of us all;
And thus the native hue of poop
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And poop of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents poop awry,
And lose the poop of action
Sincerely,
Roboman
23 September 2009"
On a side O’Reilly note, he’s recently come out backing a public health insurance option, an action which Mick has attributed to my correspondence with him. I’m inclined to agree. Once again, TWiN is changing lives and making America a better place!
Interesting news articles of the week:
-Still no news. Except for the whole 100 weeks thing.
Something(s) I’m tired of/ mad at:
-The traffic lights at 14th and Kentucky, 14th and Tennessee and 31st and Iowa. They’re jerks, and they know it, and they don’t care, and that’s why they’re even bigger jerks. Jerks!
Something(s) I’m delighted by:
-Saira! Two months together this past Monday! Hot nutzzz! (You had to be there).
Something(s) I found really kind of odd:
-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bomkgXeDkE
This Week in Answers to Your This Week in Questions This Week!
--“There are two trains approaching each other on a single track. Train A is traveling northwest at 8 miles per hour. Train B is traveling southeast at 23 parsecs per fortnight. Train A is carrying three circus elephants, a legion of Roman infantry, and three small children. Train B is carrying 36 tons of Rice Krispie Treats. The engineer of Train A is jacked up on crystal methamphetamine and carrying the child of the Antichrist. Train B is driven by a woman. If Train A is wracked by economic turmoil followed by outright rebellion, then Train B is attacked on one side by legions of syphilitic donkeys carrying small caliber firearms and on the other side by Mohawks thirsty for white scalps, who will be alive to hear you scream? Love, Matthew Gaus”
-The simple answer is 5. The math is clear. If you factor in the speed, the extra thrust from the weight of the cargo, the direction, the deliciousness of Rice Krispie treats, the inevitable birth of the spawn of the Antichrist, and the dates of military prevalence for Rome, the Mohawk, and the Donkey Army of the Inca, then divide by Gaus, you clearly get 5. But that ignores the simple inclusion of the detail of economic turmoil which directly leads to outright rebellion. Mathematically it’s an unimportant detail. But when one searches the question for an overall meaning, it clearly stands out at the heart, and its implication is that America, and with her, the world, is headed directly for a time of economic turmoil followed by outright rebellion. Therefore, the answer is clearly Glenn Beck. Thanks for your question, Gaus. That was a tricky one. You almost got me. But I triumph yet again!
And now, just as a grown up job deserves a grown up sandwich, a new era of TWiN deserves a new segment!
Nelson recommends:
-The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra! It’s a wacky movie made eight or nine years ago that spoofs ridiculous 50's sci-fi films. Funny stuff.
-Princess! It’s a fucked up little cartoon that Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park made to promote a new flash player or some such thing that was cancelled after the company they made it for saw just how awesome the first two were. You can find it on the internets. And you should.
Okay, I’m gonna round this all off with a little trip down memory lane. When I first thought about how to celebrate 100 TWiNs, I planned to read all 99 previous installments and pluck some gems from them to reprint here. Then I thought, hey! That sounds like a lot of work. Fuck that! Besides, you guys read them. You remember them. But then I decided to compromise and read the first 15 TWiNs which comprised the original first volume way back in the distant past. A time historians in some far flung future age will no doubt come to refer to as “2007.” And so, since it’s been a long time for most of us, and a lot of hard, alcohol-soaked miles in the interim, and since some of you had yet to jump aboard the TWiN train back then, I hereby reprint some gems from those first 15 editions. Mostly in the form of quotes. Because it seems kind of vain and heavy-handed to reprint my own words. I leave that to you, and the careers you will no doubt go on to have in academia painstakingly interpreting every extensive facet of my genius. Anyway, some choice bits from the first 15 TWiNs. Here you go:
--“She looked like the warden in the kind of immaculate women’s prison that only exists in Italian pornography.”
--“What, incidentally, was a pregnant mother of two doing, operating a vacuum cleaner on Mother’s Day? She was practically asking for a bullet between the eyes, wasn’t she?”
--“Scientists proposed implanting cells from British bulls’ testicles into the testicles of Australian bulls to improve the herd’s meat quality. ‘The idea would be that he can ejaculate the sperm of a British bull,’ said scientist Dr. Bruce Lee.”
--“Werewolf Bar Mitzvah. Spooky, scary. Boys becoming men. Men becoming wolves.”
--“Talk about Dickens, and they start eating bark, and sometimes tires. It’s messed up.”
--“Now push the water around your body. Touch your wet skin and feel somewhat sexual. Now strangely pure. Now sexual again. Now like an animal. Now like an elf, thin and immortal and fearless in battle.”
--“Electricity can only be replenished by whisky. This is actual physics. Do not argue with me. I am a doktor.”
--“Why’d you shoot Mike-Mike in his, uh, his hind-parts?”
--“I am pooed out by your critics. They are so wrong! They talk like they know stuff, but not so! They are entirely dumbass . . . These guys read and they are cross because you are not like other writers. Well shit. You are better, so ass them. Ass them all, badly.”
--“An official investigation by the Italian government concluded that “aliens testing secret weapons” are probably behind the recent strange events in the Sicilian village of Canneto di Caronia. Villagers said that refrigerators and other appliances have been spontaneously bursting into flames.”
--“The police? The police. The streets are flooded with the ejaculate of the homeless and you people are counting on the police!”
--“Angela Landsbury— her foulmouthed tirades against the Swedes have no place on television.”
--“Maybe he’s not even a boy. Maybe he’s two dwarves in an overcoat who want to see what sex with a big person is like.”
--“I mean, it’s a broad generalization, but my guess is an attractive man who makes pies for a living shouldn’t even spend a short amount of time in prison.”
--“We never made a kid, me and Marilou. I made sure of that by some careful sexual maneuvering and some junior high debate tactics.”
--“Ooooo! Do you like cake?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like my ass?”
“Yes.”
“Would you like to eat cake off my ass?”
“What kind of cake?”
“Angel food cake.”
“Well, Rusty. Looks like we’re gonna eat our way out of another jam.”
--“I heard a baby can eat, like, half a cup of sand and be fine.”
--“You need to build a robot with ten penises.”
--“Boy, I hope we rescue the Starfish King on this adventure.”
“It would be a slam dunk.”
“Would you call what we did last night sex?”
--“Five leg-humpingly amazing punk-rock songs about punk-rock lust, the kind that makes you see Jesus and tell him, ‘You know, you got a pretty car, I think I wanna drive it,’ and off you roll with Jesus riding shotgun and the apostles in the trunk and the Holy Spirit strapped to the roof.”
--“Next up! ‘King of Queens’ reruns! He’s fat! She’s sassy! I’M LOSING MY MOTHERFUCKING MIND!”
--“Beatrice, looking like a gypsy queen, smoldered at the foot of a statue of a young physical student. At first glance, the laboratory-gowned scientist seemed to be a perfect servant of nothing but truth. At first glance, one was convinced that nothing but truth could please him as he beamed at his test tube. At first glance, one thought that he was as much above the beastly concerns of mankind as the harmoniums in the caves of Mercury. There, at first glance, was a young man without vanity, without lust— and one accepted at its face value the title Salo had engraved on the statue, Discovery of Atomic Power.
And then one perceived that the young truth-seeker had a shocking erection.”
--“When she felt love, she was formidable; making love she left you with no uncertain memory of having passed through a carnal transaction with a caged animal. It was not just her odor, that smell (with the white gloves off) of the wild boar full of rut, that hot odor of the gallery of the zoo, no, there was something other, her perfume perhaps, a hint of sanctity, something as calculating and full of guile as high finance, that was it— she smelled like a bank, Christ she would have been too much for any man, there was something so sly at the center of her, some snake, I used literally to conceive of a snake guarding the cave which opened to the treasure, the riches, the filthy-lucred wealth of all the world, and rare was the instant I could pay my dues without feeling a high pinch of pain as if fangs had sunk into me.”
--“Approach the robot slowly with your palm extended. The robot may sniff or lick your hand. Do not be alarmed; the robot is just getting to know you.”
--“It looks like another great day for coinage!”
--“So a person coming ashore there could walk right up to an animal and unscrew its head, if he wanted to. The animal would have no plan for such an occasion. And all the other animals would just stand around and watch, unable to draw any lessons for themselves from what was going on. A person could unscrew the head of every animal on an island, if that was his idea of business or fun.”
--“It is important to keep in mind the differences between stereotypes and racism. Stereotypes are a useful, if flawed, mechanism for surviving in a multicultural world, but racism is saying them out loud.”
Ah, a simpler time. A time of wagon trains and atomic bomb testing. Of radio and dragons.
And finally, because if we don’t learn our TWiN we are doomed to repeat it. And because I ultimately don’t care if I reprint my own words, I was just being lazy. And to ensure that this anniversary TWiN is the longest TWiN ever, I take you back once more to the time of late 2007, when I shared with you all the secret of my trade. Here it is again. The informative list of facts known as:
How This Week in Nelson is Made:
1) Throughout the week, and by week I mean a loose conglomeration of days which are consecutive and equal in number to somewhere between five and ten, I will go about my normal day to day bidness. In the course of said bidness, certain things occur to me in a thinking manner, or certain outside stimuli serve to tickle what the ancient Greeks and present day homosexuals (i.e. English people) accurately refer to as “my fancy.” Sometimes, the internal and external forces even collide to create painful brain sparks and what I like to call, “filler.”
2) I jot these things down, or make a mental note to file them neatly away near the top of the mind for easy access.
3) When a reasonable number of days has passed to constitute my previously stated loose understanding of the word week, I write all these things down in a slapdash and haphazard manner, much the way one constructs the rides at a county fair.
4) I go to sleep or pass out, depending on the current phase of the moon.
5) Elves emerge from the dark recesses of the house. These elves melt down the gold that they’ve spent the previous “week” stealing from the local landed gentry. Then, they fastidiously hammer the gold out into sheets and engrave what I’ve written down onto them.
6) The golden sheets containing my writing are arranged on one of the walls in my living room in a formation which is pleasing to the eye, but not overly ostentatious (as not overly ostentatious as a wall covered in gold can be).
7) Ellionoc, the king of the elves, is blindfolded, spun to the point of disorientation, and stopped facing the golden sheets.
8) Ellionoc is given a large piece of watermelon to eat. Whichever golden sheets he hits while blindly spitting out seeds are removed from the wall and taken by a bicycle elf (they’re taller) to an undisclosed location, where agents of the Red Chinese Army reword them to effectively pass along their latest encoded intelligence reports (Big shout out to our Communist brothers!).
9) The newly edited contents are organized using a mathematical formula guided by the outcome of the first two dozen throws in a back alley dice game regularly held behind Weaver’s since 1954.
10) The contents are typed up by whoever doesn’t appear busy at the time and passed on to you!
11) The gold sheets are melted down again and fashioned into coins to finance the entire operation, and to purchase a fat goose for each of our goodly wives to prepare with a lovely apricot sauce and perhaps a potato side.
Boom! 8 pages of 100th anniversary TWiN. Hope that makes it worth the wait. And, there you have it. 100 TWiNs, and still going strong. We will ride this horse until it’s form becomes foreboding and skeletal, much like the steed of that most menacing horseman, Death. Except less animated. And I don’t intend to master it sexually, unlike Death, that lousy horsefucker.
See you next week. And quite possibly for the next 100.
–> N.
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